m afraid you have also involved our own department."

Charles gasped with horror. "You haven't let him out," he cried, "on
those absurd representations? You haven't let him slip through your
hands as you did that murderer fellow?"

"Let him slip through our hands?" the inspector cried. "I only wish
he would. There's no chance of that, unfortunately. He's in the
court there, this moment, breathing out fire and slaughter against
you both; and we're here to protect you if he should happen to fall
upon you. He's been locked up all night on your mistaken affidavits,
and, naturally enough, he's mad with anger."

"If you haven't let him go, I'm satisfied," Charles answered.
"He's a fox for cunning. Where is he? Let me see him."

We went into the court. There we saw our prisoner conversing
amicably, in the most excited way, with the magistrate (who, it
seems, was a personal friend of his); and Charles at once went
up and spoke to them. Dr. Polperro turned round and glared at him
through his pince-nez.

"The only possible explanation of this person's extraordinary and
incredible conduct," he said, "is, that he must be mad--and his
secretary equally so. He made my acquaintance, unasked, on a glass
seat on the King's Road; invited me to go on his coach to Lewes;
volunteered to buy a valuable picture of me; and then, at the
last moment, unaccountably gave me in charge on this silly and
preposterous trumped-up accusation. I demand a summons for false
imprisonment."

Suddenly it began to dawn upon us that the tables were turned. By
degrees it came out that we had made a mistake. Dr. Polperro was
really the person he represented himself to be, and had been always.
His picture, we found out, was the real Maria Vanrenen, and a
genuine Rembrandt, which he had merely deposited for cleaning and
restoring at the suspicious dealer's. Sir J. H. Tomlinson had been
imposed upon and cheated by a cunning Dutchman; _his_ picture, though
also an undoubted Rembrandt, was _not_ the Maria, and was an inferior
specimen in bad preservation. The authority we had consulted turned
out to be an ignorant, self-sufficient quack. The Maria, moreover,
was valued by other experts at no more than five or six thousand
guineas. Charles wanted to cry off his bargain, but Dr. Polperro
naturally wouldn't hear of it. The agreement was a legally binding
instrument, and what passed in Charles's mind at the moment had
nothing to do with the written contract. Our a