"But what guarantee have we that he will not escape?" whispered Mr Carlyle. "He cannot escape," replied Carrados tranquilly. "His identity is too clear." "I have no intention of trying to escape," put in Drishna, as he wrote. "You hardly imagine that I have not considered this eventuality, do you?" "All the same," murmured the ex-lawyer, "I should like to have a jury behind me. It is one thing to execute a man morally; it is another to do it almost literally." "Is that all right?" asked Drishna, passing across the letter he had written. Carrados smiled at this tribute to his perception. "Quite excellent," he replied courteously. "There is a train at nine-forty. Will that suit you?" Drishna nodded and stood up. Mr Carlyle had a very uneasy feeling that he ought to do something but could not suggest to himself what. The next moment he heard his friend heartily thanking the visitor for the assistance he had been in the matter of the Indo-Scythian inscription, as they walked across the hall together. Then a door closed. "I believe that there is something positively uncanny about Max at times," murmured the perturbed gentleman to himself. THE TRAGEDY AT BROOKBEND COTTAGE "Max," said Mr Carlyle, when Parkinson had closed the door behind him, "this is Lieutenant Hollyer, whom you consented to see." "To hear," corrected Carrados, smiling straight into the healthy and rather embarrassed face of the stranger before him. "Mr Hollyer knows of my disability?" "Mr Carlyle told me," said the young man, "but, as a matter of fact, I had heard of you before, Mr Carrados, from one of our men. It was in connexion with the foundering of the _Ivan Saratov_." Carrados wagged his head in good-humoured resignation. "And the owners were sworn to inviolable secrecy!" he exclaimed. "Well, it is inevitable, I suppose. Not another scuttling case, Mr Hollyer?" "No, mine is quite a private matter," replied the lieutenant. "My sister, Mrs Creake--but Mr Carlyle would tell you better than I can. He knows all about it." "No, no; Carlyle is a professional. Let me have it in the rough, Mr Hollyer. My ears are my eyes, you know." "Very well, sir. I can tell you what there is to tell, right enough, but I feel that when all's said and done it must sound very little to another, although it seems important enough to me." "We have occasionally found trifles of significance ourselves," said Carrados encouragingly. "Don't let that deter you." This was the essence of Lieutenant Hollyer's narrative: