"As the hour approaches it is impossible to interest the creatures with any other suggestion than that of raw meat. You came a day too late, Louis." He picked up the book and skimmed it adroitly into Mr Carlyle's hands. "I have already scented the gore, and tasted in imagination the joy of tearing choice morsels from other similarly obsessed animals." "'Catalogue des monnaies grecques et romaines,'" read the gentleman. "'To be sold by auction at the Hotel Drouet, Paris, salle 8, April the 24th, 25th, etc.' H'm." He turned to the plates of photogravure illustration which gave an air to the volume. "This is an event, I suppose?" "It is the sort of dispersal we get about once in three years," replied Carrados. "I seldom attend the little sales, but I save up and then have a week's orgy." "And when do you go?" "To-day. By the afternoon boat--Folkestone. I have already taken rooms at Mascot's. I'm sorry it has fallen so inopportunely, Louis." Mr Carlyle rose to the occasion with a display of extremely gentlemanly feeling--which had the added merit of being quite genuine. "My dear chap, your regrets only serve to remind me how much I owe to you already. _Bon voyage_, and the most desirable of Eu--Eu--well, perhaps it would be safer to say, of Kimons, for your collection." "I suppose," pondered Carrados, "this insurance business might have led to other profitable connexions?" "That is quite true," admitted his friend. "I have been trying for some time--but do not think any more of it, Max." "What time is it?" demanded Carrados suddenly. "Eleven-twenty-five." "Good. Has any officious idiot had anyone arrested?" "No, it is only----" "Never mind. Do you know much of the case?" "Practically nothing as yet, unfortunately. I came----" "Excellent. Everything is on our side. Louis, I won't go this afternoon--I will put off till the night boat from Dover. That will give us nine hours." "Nine hours?" repeated the mystified Carlyle, scarcely daring to put into thought the scandalous inference that Carrados's words conveyed. "Nine full hours. A pearl necklace case that cannot at least be left straight after nine hours' work will require a column to itself in our chart. Now, Louis, where does this Direct Insurance live?" Carlyle had allowed his blind friend to persuade him into--as they had seemed at the beginning--many mad enterprises. But none had ever, in the light of his own experience, seemed so foredoomed to failure as when, at eleven-thirty, Carrados ordered his luggage to be on the platform of Charing Cross Station at eight-fifty and then turned light-heartedly to the task of elucidating the mystery of Mrs Straithwaite's pearl necklace in the interval.