Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

William Wilson’s Racket by John Dickson Carr

After spending half a lifetime collecting the detective short story, your Editor has come to the conclusion that there are fifty key books in the field. By key books I mean those books which are outstanding for any of three reasons: sheer quality of contents, historical significance and/or rarity of first edition.

Your Editor has gone further in his bibliographic analysis and divided the fifty books into seven “periods” Chronologically these major periods could be named: Pre-Poe; Poe and Pre-Doyle; Doyle Era; 20th Century, First Decade; 20th Century, Second Decade; 20th Century, Moderns; and 20th Century, Contemporaries. The last group takes in the fourth decade to date — from 1930 to the present.

The books in this Contemporary Period have not, of course, had the opportunity to withstand the acid test of time. But there can be no doubt that one of them — Carter Dickson’s [John Dickson Carps] THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS, published in 1940 — will pass every test and remain one of the important books of modern detective short stories. The volume contains eleven tales of which the first seven concern Colonel March, head of the Scotland Yard Department whose curious name serves as the tide of the book.

All of which is a terse and somewhat academic preamble to a startling announcement — a discovery of epic importance to the American fan. Yes, you may indeed hold your breath — for did you know that there are two Colonel March short stories which were not included in Mr. Carr’s book? These two stories, believe it or not, have never been published in the United States!

We bring one of them to you now — “William Wilson’s Racket” — and we have scheduled the second for an early issue.

In “William Wilson’s Racket,” two great series of detective-mystery stories seem to blend and intermingle. For a fleeting moment Mr. Carr’s THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS and Mr. Chesterton’s the CLUB OF QUEER TRADES seem to meet on the Strand of Detection Town, shake hands, clap each other on the shoulder, chuckle loud enough to be heard all the way to America, and then, arm in arm, strut off together. Could a happier twosome be imagined in all the annals of detective literature?

Colonel March, of the Department of Queer Complaints, has entertained many an odd sort of visitor in his office at New Scotland Yard. But it is seldom that he entertains a Visitor so socially distinguished as Lady Patricia Mortlake, only daughter of the Earl of Cray.

She burst in like a whirlwind, that pleasant, spring morning two or three years ago. She almost snorted through her aristocratic nose. And this despite the fact that Lady Patricia was normally one of those languid ladies, with a bored blank eye and a sullen under-lip, who would have made an ideal heroine for Mr. Coward.

“She refuses to fill up an official form, sir,” Colonel March was told. “And she’s got a blasted Pekingese with her. But she showed me a note from the Commissioner himself—”

“Send her up,” said Colonel March. Lady Patricia subsided into a chair in a whirl and flop of furs, nursing the Pekingese. As a famous beauty, she perhaps photographed better than she looked. It was a highly enamelled sort of beauty, and her jaw looked as hard as porcelain.

She found herself facing a large, amiable man (weight seventeen stone) with a speckled face, a bland eye, and a cropped moustache. He was teetering before the fire, smoking a short pipe; and Inspector Roberts stood by with a notebook.

“I want you to find him,” Lady Patricia said crisply.

“Find him?” repeated Colonel March. “Find whom?”

“Frankie, of course,” said Lady Patricia, with some impatience. “My fiancé. Surely you’ve heard of him?”

Light came to Colonel March. Any newspaper-reader will remember the political reputation which was being made at that time by the Right Hon. Francis Hale, youngest of the Cabinet Ministers. Francis Hale was young. He was rich. He was intelligent. He had a great future ahead of him.

Anything that could be said against him was, so to speak, to his credit. Francis Hale always did the correct thing, even to becoming engaged to the impoverished daughter of an impoverished peer. He was a teetotaller, a non-smoker, and a man of almost painfully strait-laced life. Colonel March privately considered him a good deal of a stuffed shirt.

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Lady Patricia coolly, “I’m finished with him. We’ve done everything for that man. Everything! The right people, the right places, the right contacts. And I do hope I’m broadminded. But when he turned up to make a speech at that Corporation banquet, tight as a tick and practically blind to the world—!”

Now it has been stated before that nothing ever surprised Colonel March. This, however, came close to it.

“And,” continued Lady Patricia, flirting her furs, “when it comes to that red-haired hussy — actually carrying on with her in public — well, really!”

Colonel March coughed.

In fact, he covered his happy smile only just in time. To any normal human being there is something heartening, something wholly satisfying, about seeing any stuffed shirt go on the razzle-dazzle. The colonel was no exception to this rule. But he caught sight of her eye, and was silent. Lady Patricia Mortlake was no fool. Also, it struck him that she had rather a mean eye and jaw.

“I dare say you think this is all very funny?” she inquired.

“Not at all.”

“And I dare say,” she continued, opening her veiled eyes and cuddling the dog with dangerous quietness, “you wonder why this concerns the police?”

“Since you mention it—”

“But it would interest the police, I hope, to hear that Frankie has disappeared? Throwing his whole department into confusion at a critical time; to say nothing of the inconvenience to my parents and me? It would interest you to hear that he vanished out of that horrible office in Piccadilly, where heaven knows what has been happening?”

Colonel March regarded her grimly.

“Go on,” he invited.

“He’s been acting queerly,” said Lady Patricia, “for over a. month. Ever since he first saw this.”

From under her coat she took out a copy of a famous literary weekly, of the conservative and highbrow order, and unfolded it. She turned to the advertisements. With the tip of a scarlet finger-nail she indicated one advertisement printed in bold black type. It said simply:

William and Wilhelmina Wilson, 250A, Piccadilly. Nothing more.

“It’s been appearing in only the best papers,” the girl insisted. “And every time Frankie sees it, he seems to go off his head.”

Colonel March frowned.

“What,” he asked, “is the business of William and Wilhelmina Wilson?”

“That’s just it! I don’t know.”

“But if they’re in a legitimate business, they must be listed?”

“Well, they’re not.” Her upper lip lifted defiantly. “I know, because we’ve had a private detective after Frankie. The detective says they sell vacuum cleaners.”

Though Inspector Roberts had ceased in despair to take notes, Colonel March betrayed only an expression of refreshed interest. He continued to teeter before the fire, and puff at his short pipe.

“It started,” she went on, “one afternoon when I was waiting for him in the car outside the House of Commons. He stayed behind on the steps, talking interminably to that dreadful Labour man What’s-his-name. He simply wouldn’t come on, no matter how many gestures I made. When he did condescend to join me, he looked at me in a queer way, and asked the chauffeur to stop at the nearest newsagents. There he got out and bought a copy of that paper.”

She pointed.

“I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. But I knew there was something wrong with him. I asked him if he couldn’t take any interest in what I was doing for him. Even in the concert of chamber music I’d arranged for that night, where Julio’s Trio was to render selections from the modern masters. And he said—”

“Yes?” prompted Colonel March.

“He said ‘Damn and blast the modern masters.’ It was too utterly tiresome, when Julio is all the rage this season.”

“Indeed?”

“Then I caught him cutting out that advertisement from the paper. That wouldn’t have mattered, and I forgot all about it. But only a week ago I caught him cutting it out again, this time out of The Times. So,” explained Lady Patricia, “I decided to find out who this ‘William and Wilhelmina Wilson’ really were. I paid them a visit yesterday.”

Her eyes took on a shrewd, speculative look.

“Whoever they are,” she said thoughtfully, “they’ve got pots of money. I expected to find the office some dreadful little place: you know. But it wasn’t. My dear man, it’s in a big new block of offices opposite the Green Park. So business-like: that’s what I can’t understand. You go up in a lift, and there’s a big marble corridor and a ground-glass door with ‘William and Wilhelmina Wilson’ on it.”

Her expression was now one of active fury, which she tried to conceal. As though remembering to be maternal, she lifted the Pekingese, shook it in the air, and cooed to it with pouted lips. The dog sneezed the hair out of its eyes, and looked bored.

“I opened the door,” she said, “and there was a big waiting-room. Empty. Some rather good bronzes and etchings, too. I called out. I rapped on the table. But nobody answered. Just when I was wondering what to do, Flopit here... izzums, precious!... Flopit found another door, and began to bark.”

She drew a deep breath.

“I opened that door. It was a big office, like a secretary’s office. In the middle was a big flat-topped desk, with a swivel-chair behind it. In the chair sat Frankie, my Frankie. And on his lap, with her arms round his neck, sat a horrible red-haired hussy, about nineteen years old.”

This time it was a near thing.

Colonel March’s cough was so prolonged and strangled that a blind man would have noticed something wrong. Lady Patricia’s hard eye noted it, and hated it. But she had to speak now.

“Well, really! I mean to say! I hope I’m broad-minded, but—! My dear man, I was boiling; positively boiling. I didn’t say anything. I just picked up Flopit by his precious neck, and walked out, and slammed the door. I walked across the waiting-room, and out into the hall.

“But I didn’t go any farther. After all, I have Frankie’s good at heart. And Frankie is awfully rich, and it didn’t seem right that she should get his money, whereas I... I mean, when you’ve worked and slaved for a man, as I’ve worked and slaved for Frankie... well, it’s rather thick.

“I waited in front of the door. Finally, I decided to go back and have it out with them. Back I marched into the waiting-room; and there I met somebody I hadn’t seen before. A well-dressed elderly man. Rather distinguished-looking: bald except for white hair at the back of his head, curling down nearly to his collar.

“He said, ‘Yes, madam?’

“I said, ‘Who are you?’

“He said, ‘I am William Wilson. Have you an appointment?’

“I just froze him. I asked to see Mr. Hale. He had the nerve to raise his eyebrows and say that Frankie wasn’t there: that he had never heard of any Mr. Hale and didn’t know what I was talking about. I said I also supposed he didn’t know anything about a red-haired girl either? He looked surprised and said he imagined I must mean Miss Wilhelmina Wilson, his niece and secretary — think of it! — but he still knew of no Mr. Hale.

“Well, really, that was too much! I just walked past him and opened the door to the office where I’d seen Frankie before. Frankie wasn’t there; but the red-haired girl was. She was standing in front of another little door, which led to a kind of cloakroom, and looking disgustingly guilty. I simply pushed her out of the way, and looked in. But...”

Lady Patricia Mortlake gulped.

“Yes?” prompted Colonel March.

“Frankie wasn’t there,” she said.

“He wasn’t in the cloakroom?”

“He wasn’t anywhere,” returned the girl, lifting her shoulders. “There was only one other room, a big private office overlooking Piccadilly on the fourth floor. He wasn’t hiding anywhere, because I looked. And there’s no way out of any of the offices except through the door to the main corridor, where I’d been standing. Frankie wasn’t there. But his clothes were.”

“What?” demanded Colonel March.

“His clothes. The suit he’d been wearing: with his watch, and notecase, and papers, and key-ring, and the fountain-pen I gave him for his birthday. They were hanging up in a locker in the cloakroom. Clothes, but no Frankie. And he hasn’t been seen since. Now do you wonder why I’m here?”

Hitherto Colonel March had been listening with an indulgent air. Now his sandy eyebrows drew together.

“Let me understand this,” he said in a sharp and rather sinister voice. “You mean he literally disappeared?”

“Yes!”

“He couldn’t, for instance, have slipped out while you were examining the various offices?”

“Without his clothes?” asked Patricia unanswerably.

There was a silence.

“Frankie!” she almost wailed. “Of all people, Frankie! Of course I suppose he could have sneaked out. For that matter, he could have climbed out of a window and down the face of the building into Piccadilly. But in his underwear? Frankie?”

“Suppose he had another suit of clothes there?”

“Why?” asked Patricia, again unanswerably.

It is not often that Colonel March finds himself stumped, definitely left flat and up against it. This appeared to be one of the times.

“And what have you done since?”

“What could I do? He’s not at his flat here, or at his place in the country. Not one of his friends, including his private secretary, seems to know where he is. I even tackled that dreadful Labour man he seems to have been so thick with recently; and I thought for a second he was going to burst out laughing. But even he swore he didn’t know where Frankie was.”

“H’m,” said Colonel March.

“We can’t make this public, you see. That would be dreadful. And so you’re our last hope. Haven’t you got any theory?”

“Oh, theories!” said Colonel March, waving a big arm irritably. “I can think of half a dozen theories. But they don’t explain the main difficulty. Suppose any lurid theory you like. Suppose the mysterious William and Wilhelmina Wilson have murdered him and hidden his body. Suppose there is a sinister political conspiracy against him. Suppose Francis Hale has disguised himself and is masquerading as the distinguished-looking old gentleman with the white hair...”

Patricia sat up straight.

“A supposition,” said the colonel grimly, “about as likely as any idea that he went walking about the streets in his underwear. But I repeat: suppose anything you like! It still won’t explain what puzzles me most.”

“Which is?”

“The profession of William and Wilhelmina Wilson,” answered Colonel March. “Any ideas, Roberts?”

Inspector Roberts, shutting up his notebook, ruminated on this.

“Well, sir—” he began hesitantly.

“Yes, yes; go on!”

“Well, sir, the point seems to be this. Either Mr. Hale disappeared of his own free will, or else he didn’t. It looks to me as though he didn’t.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“The personal effects,” said Roberts. “The watch and the notecase and the rest of it. If you were going to do a bunk somewhere, wouldn’t those be the very things you’d take with you? It isn’t as though he were trying to stage a fake suicide, or anything like that. One minute he’s comfortably in that office, with the young lady in his lap” — Roberts coughed, and looked swiftly away from their guest — “and the next he’s gone. That’s the part I don’t like.”

Colonel March grunted.

“And yet,” pursued Roberts, “if that pair have managed to make away with him, I can’t for the life of me see how or why. It’s like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.”

He broke off, for a curious expression crossed Colonel March’s face: it was as though he had been hit across the back of the head with a club.

“Good lord!” he muttered, in a hollow voice like a ghost. “I wonder if that could be it?”

“If it could be what?” demanded Lady Patricia.

“The name,” argued Colonel March, half to himself, “might be a coincidence. On the other hand, it might be most infernally apt: the seal of Wilson.” He turned to Lady Patricia. “Tell me. Can Francis Hale hold his liquor?”

She stared back at him.

“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about!”

“Yes, you do.” The colonel was irritable. “You told me a while ago that Hale, in one of his fits of being fed up — ahem! — in one of his more erratic moments, got tight at a Corporation banquet. What did he drink?”

His visitor set her jaw.

“Everything,” she said. “Beginning with cocktails and going all the way through to brandy. He simply sloshed it down. My father was frantic.”

“And how did it affect him? Hale, I mean?”

“They said he never made a better speech. He mixed up the pages in reading it; and, to anybody who really knew what the speech was about, it sounded horrible. But nobody noticed anything. They even seemed to like it: which was a mercy, because—”

Colonel March rubbed his hands together. He was utterly pleased and absorbed, with a smile which threatened to dislodge the pipe from his mouth. Then he went over and patted his guest on the shoulder.

“Go home,” he said. “Go home, take an aspirin, and stop worrying. Inspector Roberts and I are going to call on the Wilsons. I have every reason to believe I see a way out of the difficulty. In fact, I think I can promise it, now that I am able to guess—”

“Guess what?” demanded Lady Patricia, lifting the dog and shaking it at him.

“The racket of William Wilson,” said Colonel March.

A smooth-slipping lift took them up to the fourth floor of number 250A Piccadilly. A holy calm, as of a temple, pervaded these marble premises. The names William and Wilhelmina Wilson were printed on the ground-glass door in black lettering as discreet as a visiting-card. Motioning Inspector Roberts to precede him, Colonel March opened the door.

The waiting-room inside was softly lighted and carpeted. Magazines were scattered on a centre table for the convenience of those who waited; the point which racked Inspector Roberts’s wits was what in blazes they were supposed to be waiting for. And behind the reception-desk at the far end sat a small, sleek, trim young lady with red hair. She was glancing through a copy of a fashionable weekly.

“Miss Wilson?” said Colonel March.

“Yes?” said Miss Wilson with polite briskness.

“I should like to see your uncle.”

Colonel March laid his official card on the desk.

For a few seconds Miss Wilson looked at it gravely, and then raised her head. If the notoriously frigid Francis Hale had fallen for Miss Wilson, Inspector Roberts for one did not blame him; she had blue eyes of a deceptive demureness, and a mouth of the sort called generous.

But if Roberts expected to see any sign of guilt or even nervousness, he was disappointed. What flashed across her face was a smile of almost unholy glee, which she instantly corrected.

“My uncle has been rather expecting you,” she admitted. “Will you walk into our parlour?”

She led them through the secretary’s office — with its famous desk and swivel-chair — to a third office overlooking Piccadilly. Here, behind another flat-topped desk, sat a stout old gentleman with the manners of a cardinal. His glossy bald head was set off by a fringe of white hair which curved down to the back of his collar. He wore pince-nez, through which he was studying a pile of large photographs. He welcomed his visitors courteously.

“As my niece says,” he told them, “I have been rather expecting you.” His mouth tightened. “Please sit down. You had better remain too, Wilhelmina, my dear.”

“In that case,” said Colonel March, “I’ll come straight to the point. Of course, your name isn’t really Wilson?”

Mr. Wilson looked pained.

“Naturally not. It is a trade name. A” — he waved his hand — “a flight of poetic fancy, if you like.”

“Yes,” said Colonel March. “That’s what I thought, as soon as I guessed what your racket was.”

Now Mr. Wilson seemed more than pained; he seemed hurt.

“Racket!” he protested. “My dear sir! No, no, no, no! That is too much. Profession, if you like. Business, if you insist. Yes: say a business, and on a large scale. After all, I am a modern man who has simply seen a modern need for those who can afford it. I supply that need. And there you are.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll give you away?”

Mr. Wilson permitted himself a slight smile.

“Hardly. If you were to look in there” — he indicated a row of filing-cases along one wall — “and see the names of some of my more illustrious clients, I hardly think you would talk of exposure. There is one client, for instance... but we must not be indiscreet.” He returned to an old grievance. “Profession, yes. Business, yes. But racket? Really, now! On the contrary, I flatter myself that I am something of a public benefactor.”

Inspector Roberts was a patient man. As Colonel March’s assistant, he had to be. But there are limits to the human curiosity of even the best-trained subordinate.

“Sir,” he suddenly cried, “I can’t stand any more of this. Before I go completely off my chump, will you tell me what this is all about? What’s going on here? What is the fellow’s racket? And why should he call himself Wilson?”

All three of them looked at him— Mr. Wilson with a reproving cluck of the tongue, Miss Wilson with a smile, and Colonel March with blandness.

“He calls himself William Wilson,” replied Colonel March, “after the story of the same name. That story was written by Edgar Allan Poe, as you so helpfully suggested. You don’t remember the story?”

“No, sir, I can’t say I do.”

“William Wilson,” said Colonel March, “met himself.”

Roberts blinked.

“Met himself?”

“He met his own image,” explained Colonel March, settling back comfortably. “I rather admire Mr. Wilson here. He is the proprietor of a unique Agency. He provides doubles for eminent men and women in their unimportant public appearances, so that the real men can stop at home and get on with their work.”

Mr. Wilson leaned across the desk and spoke earnestly.

“You would be surprised,” he said, “at the call there is for our services. Consider the life of a public man I While he should be at work, custom demands that he make endless public appearances, none of them in the least an iota of good. He makes interminable tours of inspection; he lays corner-stones; he addresses mothers’ meetings. Few if any of the people he meets have ever seen him before, or will ever see him again. And a good double—!”

Mr. Wilson drew a deep breath, rather sadly.

“I fear the idea is not mine,” he went on. “It was tried out a few years ago by a very eminent American. He simply could not stand all the handshaking.”

Wilhelmina Wilson intervened loyally.

“But you were the only one who saw its commercial possibilities,” she cried, and sat down on the edge of his desk as though to defend him. She somewhat spoiled the effect of this by winking at Colonel March.

“Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Wilson. He turned back to his guests.

“Our fees, of course, are considerable,” he added apologetically. “But you have no idea of the difficulties. Once I had to send all the way to South Africa to get a passable double for... well, well, again we mustn’t be indiscreet!” He closed his eyes and smiled happily. “Then there is the question of elocution, voice-training, and so on. On the whole, I am proud of my handiwork. The next time you go to a cinema and see a newsreel, watch very closely! You may see something that will surprise you.”

Inspector Roberts was getting his breath back.

“Then Mr. Hale—” he began.

“Ah, yes,” murmured the proprietor of the Agency, brushing his dry palms together and frowning at Colonel March. “Mr. Hale! I imagine you saw a discrepancy when Mr. Hale’s double, a promising young actor named Gabriel Fisk, got drunk at that banquet?”

“A discrepancy,” said Colonel March; “but probably not the discrepancy you mean. Wasn’t that rather rash of him, by the way?”

“Perhaps,” admitted Mr. Wilson sadly. “But the lesser of two evils. You see, we hadn’t known that Mr. Hale’s fiancée was to be present; otherwise we should not have risked it. So, in case Fisk made a bad slip of some kind, he had to have an excuse for making a slip. Mr. Hale is a notorious and genuine teetotaller. But then (I thought) even a teetotaller can change his mind.”

Colonel March chuckled.

“He can change his mind,” said the colonel. “What he can’t change is his digestive system. He can’t work his way through a huge wine-list, from cocktails to brandy, without either becoming ill or going to sleep. In a man who has never taken a drink in his life, I submit that it’s a physical impossibility. When I heard of that little performance, I said to myself: ‘It is magnificent; but it isn’t Hale.’ And, speaking of his fiancée...”

Wilhelmina Wilson stiffened.

Throughout this conversation, she had several times seemed on the point of speaking. She still sat on the edge of her uncle’s desk, staring moodily at the toe of her slipper. When Colonel March spoke, she looked at her uncle as though with appeal.

But Mr. Wilson remained unruffled.

“Ah, yes!” he said. “That unfortunate affair yesterday morning!”

“What was unfortunate about it?” the girl demanded, with sudden passion.

“Tush!” said her uncle, raising a gentle but admonitory forefinger. He looked distressed. “Colonel March, my niece is — impulsive. Like her poor mother, my sister. And she is very fond of young Gabriel Fisk.

“You understand now what happened, I hope? That suit of clothes, with the notecase and watch and the rest of it, has nothing to do with the case. It’s a supernumerary. Mr. Hale provided us with an exact duplicate of his possessions. I am an artist, sir, or I am nothing. Neither the suit nor its contents has been worn for a week. Fisk left it hanging there in the locker when he changed in that cloakroom after appearing at the Muswell Hill Flower Show last Tuesday week.

“Yesterday Fisk, in his ordinary clothes, came in for instructions. He and my niece—” Mr. Wilson coughed. “It was unfortunate that Lady Patricia Mortlake walked in when she did. Fisk, of course, simply slipped out when her back was turned. Unfortunately, Lady Patricia is a strong-minded person. She ransacked the place, found the suit, and suspected I hate to think what.”

“And Hale?” asked Colonel March, without batting an eyelid. “The real Hale? Where is he now?”

Again Mr. Wilson was apologetic.

“At his country place, with his head under the bedclothes, until he can think up an excuse to explain his supposed conduct. Even if he tells the truth, I’m afraid Lady Patricia will not like it. And I shall probably... er... lose a client. Life,” said Mr. Wilson, shaking his head, “is difficult.”

“Yes.”

“In any case, as I said before, you will respect our little secret? Our racket, as you prefer to call it?” Colonel March got to his feet. Always an impressive figure, he now seemed to fill the room. He put on his soft hat at a more rakish angle than was seemly, and picked up his silver-headed stick. His speckled face was aglow.

“Candidly,” he said, “I can’t do anything else. You’ve got me. If I understand the situation, to show up this racket would be to wreck half the public reputations in England. We can’t have that. The public demands to be deceived. By gad, it shall be deceived! So, if Miss Wilson vouches for the truth of this story—?”

“Yes,” said the girl, with her eyes on the floor.

“Then there’s nothing more to be said. Sir, good day to you!”

“And to you, Colonel March,” beamed Mr. Wilson. “Wilhelmina, my dear, will you show these gentlemen out?”

Wilhelmina did show them out. Yet she did not appear to be happy about anything. For the first time her manner displayed a trace of nervousness. In the outer office she suddenly stopped, and whirled round on them.

“You old—” she began explosively, and then broke off to laugh; or cry — Colonel March was not sure which. “What are you thinking?”

“Thinking?” repeated Colonel March, with massive innocence.

“Yes, you were! You know you were! I could see it in your face. What’s the matter? Don’t you believe our story even now? I swear to you that that suit of clothes hasn’t been touched for a week!”

“Oh, that?” said the colonel, as though enlightened. “I believe that.”

“Then what is it? What were you thinking?”

“Well,” said Colonel March, “since you ask, I was thinking about the dog.”

“Dog?” she echoed blankly.

“Lady Patricia Mortlake’s dog. An objectionable dog. But then I don’t like Pekes.” Colonel March reflected. “It had one quality, though, that I did notice. The dog Flopit took absolutely no interest in strangers. You could show it the whole personnel of Scotland Yard, and it never so much as opened an eye — let alone barking. It’s the sort of dog which barks only when it scents or senses someone it knows very well. So, if it was Gabriel Fisk who was here with you yesterday, I only wondered why Flopit set up the clamour that drew Lady Patricia Mortlake’s attention to you both.”

While the blue eyes never left him, and an expression of impish animation survived even the embarrassed colour of her face, Colonel March added a last word.

“Stick to him,” he advised in an even lower voice. “You’ll be much better for him than that high-born shrew who’s got his life planned out to the last musicale and reception.”

“I’ve been in love with Frank Hale for a long time,” the girl confessed. “But I thought it might be better for him if we said—”

“There’s no reason for you and your uncle to lie in order to please her,” said Colonel March. “As for Hale, there are still a few gleams of humanity in him. Under you, please God, he may yet develop into a statesman. Good afternoon, Miss Wilson. Come, Roberts. We must go and find some more queer complaints.”