“Now, sir, _if_ you please,” he added, turning back to Mr. Foster. “The whole story right through, please, in your own words.” Mr. Foster, who in any case had nobody else’s words in which to tell his story, complied with alacrity. He was a tubby, rather red little man, and at the moment he looked as if he were suffering from an acute attack of apoplexy. His slightly prominent, pale-blue eyes stood out farther than ever, his wide loose-lipped mouth gaped with the unspoken words seeking egress, his sanguine countenance was mottled with earnest perspiration. He swept himself along in the flood-tide of his own speech. Guy listened with puckish delight concealed beneath the grave countenance proper to the occasion. His acquaintance with Mr. Foster had not been long, but it had been very intense. Acquaintance with Mr. Foster was like that. He pervaded as well as clung. One may dismiss limpets with an airy gesture, one may disregard the crab affixed to one’s toe, one may smile in an atmosphere of poison-gas; but one was still unfitted to cope with Mr. Reginald Foster. And the desolating, the heartrending, the utterly unforgivable thing was that Mr. Reginald Foster meant so well. Give us malice, surround us with backbiters, fill our house with blackguards; but Heaven defend us from the well-meaning bore. Mr. Foster spluttered on. He had a good story to tell, and he was making the most of it. “Crown Prince, eh?” interrupted the Inspector, now thoroughly genial again. “Crown _Prince_?” Mr. Foster nodded importantly. “That’s what she said, Inspector, yes. Crown Prince.” The words slid smoothly off his tongue, like salad oil off the poised tablespoon. “Perhaps you misunderstood her, Foster,” put in Guy, who was not feeling any too happy about the Crown Prince; he felt that to drag in Royalty was really overdoing it a little. “She _said_ Crown Prince,” persisted Mr. Foster. One gathered that, in Mr. Foster’s opinion, what she said went. “That’s right,” ventured the constable. “All covered with ribbons an’ things, he was. Medals, I wouldn’t be surprised.” “Tl! take your statement later, Graves,” boomed the Inspector. The constable retired. “Crown Prince,” repeated Mr. Foster, with the air of one clinching a point. The Inspector was only too ready to have the point clinched. He clinched it in his notebook. “Yes, sir?” he cooed. If a corpse and two murderers make a sergeant, what does not a Crown Prince and a whole gang make an Inspector? Besides, somebody was sure to turn up. Mr. Foster continued, rapidly and with purpose. “Man with the Broken Nose?” gloated the Inspector, and moistened his pencil once more. With reluctance Mr. Foster brought his story to a conclusion. As if he had timed his entrance for the same moment (which, in point of fact, he had) Mr. Doyle strolled casually into the room.