follow where the light leads. I’ll go even so far as this,” he added, rising to his feet and walking slowly towards the door, with his hand on the other man’s shoulder, “it isn’t so much that wretched fellow’s life I want to save. I’ve got to follow the light that leads to the truth. It’s our job, Andrew. When you were a soldier, your job was to obey orders and fight your way through. Well, my peacetime job is something like that—to follow the light where it leads.”
Andrew made no response. His mouth was set, his carriage perfectly steady, but he was oppressed with the queer sensation of having stumbled into another world, full of unreal people and unreal possibilities.
The door was opened, the buzz of voices commenced outside, the next client rose expectantly, and Glenlitten, without any word of farewell, passed through the musty offices, across the crowded pavement to his waiting car. He felt like a man in whom speech has been stifled. On the way from the City westwards, he sat with grimly folded arms, looking out of the window with the eyes of a blind man.
CHAPTER XI
It was certainly a strange dispensation of chance that Andrew, on his homeward way, after leaving his gunsmith and walking a short distance to rejoin his car, should have seen upon the door of a block of offices the brass-plated announcement:
MR. FELIX MAIN
PRIVATE DETECTIVE
He studied the plate for several seconds and finally acted upon an uncontrollable impulse. He entered the hospitable open portals, mounted the stairs, and knocked at the door upon which the name was printed in black letters. A very modern-looking young woman, with flaxen hair, short-cropped and short of skirt, looked up enquiringly.
“Is Mr. Felix Main in?” Andrew asked.
“He is,” the girl admitted. “What about it?”
“I should like to see him.”
“Business?”
“Yes. I sha’n’t keep him long.”
“Any name?”
“Glenlitten—Lord Glenlitten.”
The girl resisted an obvious impulse to put out her tongue and indulged instead in a grimace.
“I’ll tell him,” she promised, and disappeared.
She knocked at an inner door. There was a murmur of voices from inside the mahogany-encased tabernacle. She reappeared a little chastened.
“Mr. Main will spare you a few minutes,” she announced and lifted a flap of the counter.
Andrew was ushered into a bare-looking office, in which at a writing table sat a small man with scanty red hair, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and pale, yet shrewd eyes. He studied his visitor without apparent curiosity.
“Pray sit down,” he invited. “I have five minutes at your disposal. Please tell me what you want.”
Andrew looked at the proffered chair, dusted it with a fine, cambric handkerchief, but hesitated before seating himself.
“Five minutes may not be enough,” he remarked. “Perhaps I had better call another time.”
Mr. Felix Main looked more closely at his visitor, who was in his way impressive, and began to feel some doubts.
“You are not by any chance the Marquis of Glenlitten, are you?” he enquired.
“My name,” was the terse response.
A subtle change seemed to permeate the whole being of Mr. Felix Main. The suspicion passed from his manner. The slight arrogance was forgotten. The pince-nez were laid upon the table.
“Dear me, dear me!” he exclaimed. “I am very honoured. This is most interesting. I have read every line in the Press concerning that intriguing burglary at your house. In fact, I was so interested that I travelled down into the country and took the liberty of attending the inquest.”
“The devil you did!” Andrew commented grimly. “That’s the last sort of holiday I should have indulged in. I suppose you know, then, that they’ve got the burglar?”
“I have just read the account of his arrest. Quite a smart piece of work that. You couldn’t tell me a thing about the case, Lord Glenlitten, that I don’t know already.”
“Well, that makes it easier,” Andrew observed, leaning a little forward in his uncomfortable chair. “If you’ve read all the details, I don’t need to go over them again. Seems simple enough, on the face of it, doesn’t it? Up the ladder comes the burglar, and in rushes poor De Besset who could see him coming from his window. There’s only one thing for the burglar to do, if he wants to get away with the booty, and he does it.”
“Just so,” Mr. Main concurred. “He shoots.”
“Plain as a pikestaff,” Andrew agreed emphatically. “Now comes the trouble though. The man they’ve arrested pleads guilty to the burglary, but denies ever having possessed a revolver in his life, and insists upon it that De Besset was killed by some one else concealed in the room.”
“Of course he had to do that,” the detective commented. “Bit thin, though.”
Andrew smiled with satisfaction. For the first time, he felt that he had done a shrewd thing in coming to see Mr. Felix Main.
“Ridiculous on the face of it,” he scoffed.
“And yet,” the detective reflected, “what else could the fellow do? You couldn’t expect him to put his own neck in the noose. If he didn’t do it, some one else did. It seems to me a pretty feeble effort, though.”
“That’s exactly what I say,” Andrew assented eagerly. “Now this is why I’ve come to see you. I daresay you know that Sir Richard Cotton’s taken up the case. He’s going to instruct counsel to defend the prisoner. He is actually exploiting the theory that there was a third man present in the bedchamber who fired the shot.”
“Any evidence?” the detective enquired, glancing a little stealthily at his visitor.
“None that I can imagine,” Andrew replied. “To my mind, the suggestion is simply damned rot. Dick Cotton’s an old friend of mine, and he can be very convincing at times, but he’s got a bee in his bonnet over this affair. What I say is—and my wife agrees with me—that it was practically impossible for a third person to be in her bedroom whilst she was there, and unknown to her.”
Mr. Felix Main stroked his chin.
“It’s the only possible defence,” he pointed out, “but unless Sir Richard Cotton has something up his sleeve, I shouldn’t think he has the ghost of a chance. Your wife’s evidence at the inquest appeared to me conclusive.”
“Well, I’m glad to find you take a sensible view of the case,” Andrew declared, with a sigh of relief. “Now what I want you to do is to go down to Glenlitten and try to find out, if you can, what Cotton is aiming at. I’ll give you authority to go over the house, and you can ask any one whatever questions you choose. Dick Cotton’s an old friend of mine, but I’m damned if I’m going to have my wife worried to death in the witness box just because it’s his business to get his client off.”
“I take it, then,” Mr. Felix Main observed cautiously, “that what you want me to do is to discover on what lines Sir Richard Cotton is working, and whom else he intends to try to drag into the case?”
“Precisely,” Andrew agreed. “Get to work. I give you a free hand for expenses. The law’s at the back of you. They want the man proved guilty. All I want is justice done and not to have my wife bothered by senseless questions. You can talk to her if you like for a few minutes. She’ll tell you all that she saw and that was absolutely nothing. The whole affair’s