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I WAS in the act of closing the front door of the building in which my temporary abode was situated, and stepping out between the spiked iron railings on to the pavement of Adelphi Terrace, when I recognised the familiar but always exciting sound of a police chase near at hand. From where I stood, I could hear the hurrying footsteps, the disjointed shouts, always with their underlying note of savagery, and a shrill police whistle in the distance. I stepped hastily forward, and almost at that moment the fugitive appeared, swung himself round by the railings and prepared to continue his flight. He was barely half a dozen yards away from me, and I had a lightning-like impression of his miserable state. He was small, shabbily dressed, ginger-haired and sandy of complexion. The blood was streaming from one side of his face, and his breath was coming in little sobbing gulps. Even in those few moments the blueness of his eyes moved me to wonder, and the twitching of his agonised lips was like the whimpering of a frightened child. Close behind came the chase. It was a matter of seconds now before they too would appear round the corner to pounce exultantly upon their quarry. The little man seemed indeed wholly at their mercy. He had swung himself round the corner, taken two steps along the pavement, but, at the sight of me standing there, he had hesitated—a hesitation which must be fatal—unless—

A great dramatist has written a play to prove that the instinct of helping any creature to escape from constitutional authority is practically a primeval one. I subscribed to that instinct without pause or delay. A look flashed between us, and he understood. I stepped a little on one side. He sprang at the door, which I had held ajar, disappeared inside, and slammed it after him. The footsteps and catcalls were now almost at hand, the Terrace was deserted and I myself could scarcely hope to escape questioning if discovered loitering there. I played the Jesuit. To avoid a spoken lie, I acted one. I crossed the street hastily, leaned over the railing and peered below into that strange piece of waste ground which borders the Embankment gardens. The chase—consisting of the usual crowd—two or three rough-looking men who seemed to be in earnest, half a dozen loiterers who had evidently joined in the man-hunt for the thrill of it, and a sprinkling of others, mostly nondescripts—accepted the hint without qualm or hesitation, crossed the road and plunged down the steps into the little entry, scarcely troubling to glance along the empty Terrace. They did not even stop to ask me a question. My attitude and apparent interest in the blank space below were enough for them. A burly policeman pushed his way from the rear and disappeared round the corner of the steps in a couple of bounds. I made the inevitable inquiry from one of the pursuers who seemed to have had enough of the chase and had come to a standstill at the steps.

“What’s the little man done?”

The youth shook his head.

“Dunno,” he answered. “I just seen ‘em all running and came along.”

I re-crossed the street, turned my key in the lock, and entered. I closed the door carefully, made my way to the second floor and switched on the electric light. There was no one in sight. I looked upwards, and, three flights above, I caught sight of a white terrified face, peering through the banisters. I called to him softly.

“Come down and I’ll let you in. There’s no one else in the building. These are all offices.”

The face disappeared, and soon I heard the sound of light, quick footsteps. When the hunted man came to the last flight of stairs and slackened his pace a little as he approached me, I felt almost inclined to smile. His appearance was entirely that of a frightened, even a terrified child. He looked ridiculously young, yet the wound on his cheek and the partly dried blood gave a touch of the sinister to his appearance. He came hesitatingly towards me.

“They’ve all gone on,” I told him. “Come this way.”

I unlocked my door, and he followed me into the little hall, I pushed open the door of the bathroom, and threw him out some towels from the cupboard.

“Do what you can to your face,” I recommended, “and brush your clothes.”

He looked down at his shabby blue serge suit apologetically.

“I fell down once or twice,” he confided, speaking in a not unpleasant voice with some trace of a cockney accent. “Curse them all,” he added, with a sudden vindictive note in his tone. “They ran me pretty near to death, and there wasn’t one of those who nigh caught me who’d ever seen me before or knew whether I’d done anything or not. Blast them!”

“‘Make yourself look as decent as you can,” I directed, “and then come this way.”

I passed into my sitting room and looked out of the window. One or two youths and men who had abandoned the chase were slowly climbing the steps, and dispersing towards Duke Street or along the Terrace, without even a glance at my front door. I turned away, seated myself in my easy-chair and in a few minutes my guest made his timid entry. His appearance was very much improved. The wound had evidently not been a deep one, and he had been able to wash off most of the blood. He carried a towel in his hand with which he dabbed his chin every now and then. He had made some attempt to straighten his mass of touseled hair, and he had brushed his clothes until the shine of wear was visible. A more inoffensive-looking person I have never seen.

“Well, what have you been up to?” I asked him.

“It is a longish story, guv’nor,” he answered hesitatingly.

I saw his eyes fixed greedily upon the sideboard. I mixed him a mild whisky and soda, and another for myself.

“Sit down there,” I invited, pointing to a chair. “You’ll have to tell me all about it before I can make up my mind whether to march you round to the police station or not.”

He shivered a little.

“I don’t think you’ll do that, guv’nor.”

“I may. A man doesn’t run away for nothing, you know.”

He drank, or rather gulped down, his whisky and soda. Now that I looked at him closely, I saw that there were little wrinkles about his eyes. He was probably not so young as I had thought.

“Have they gone?” he asked, glancing towards the window.

“I believe so,” I answered. “They will think that they missed you down that entry. It’s where you ought to have gone at any rate.”

He shook his head as he sank wearily into the chair to which I had pointed.

“I was done,” he confessed. “I couldn’t have kept on my legs another minute. My knees ain’t left off trembling yet”

“Now then, out with it,” I enjoined. “I’ve given you a chance, but whether I help you further or not depends on what you have to tell me.”

He looked into the fire despondently. Then he looked at me, studied my face, almost, as it seemed, hungrily, as though he were trying to make up hts mind what manner of man I was.

“I could tell it better on a drop more whisky.”

I had made the first dose mild enough, so I repeated it. He sucked it down greedily.

“I’m a ship’s steward, sir,” he confided balancing the tumbler in his hands. “Bibby Line between here and Australia. I was on the Oretavia, landed early this morning at Tilbury.”

“You haven’t been long getting into trouble,” I commented.

He shivered, listened for a moment, and rose to his feet. He made his way on tiptoe to the window and peered down from behind the curtain into the street.

“There’s more people about down there,” he remarked uneasily, “a cop, too, over by the railings.”

I left my place and stood by his side. There were a few passers-by and certainly a policeman talking to the man who looks after unattended motor cars, but there was nothing particularly disturbing.

“You’re as safe here as anywhere,” I assured him. “Get on with your story and I shall know what to do if they come here for you.”

He resumed his place.

“When I’ve told my story,” he said drearily, “you may want to march me round to the police station yourself.”

“That depends,” I told him. “Get on with it.”

“It’s what the newspapers would call ‘An Everyday Drama,’” he began, looking sorrowfully into the fire. “I married a good enough girl a couple of years ago—I’d been saving up a long time for it. She didn’t mean no harm. She was good enough then, I think, but these long voyages was too much for her. This last time they let me off the ship early, and I suppose I got home before I was expected. Anyhow, there he was—the man I’d always been afraid of— sitting in the kitchen smoking his pipe.”

I lit a cigarette, simply that I might have an excuse to look away from him. His lips were whimpering again, and there was a suspicious break in his voice.

“We had words, of course,” he went on. “Agnes she didn’t seem to know rightly what to do. She wouldn’t admit anything, and she wouldn’t deny. He just sat there, and most of the time he laughed at me. At last I got up. ‘Look here, little spitfire,’ he said to me, ‘if you want your wife back again you’ve got to fight for her. How does that strike you?’ I looked at him, and I couldn’t see nothing for a moment. He was over six feet—a drayman by trade—with great shoulders and arms—why he could pretty well put me in his pocket. And he wanted to fight me for my wife!”

“What did you do about it?”

“I told him I’d fight,” the little man continued, with a queer light shining in his blue eyes—“and I did fight. Only me weighing about eight stone and him fourteen, and him being a fighting bully and me never having hurt a man before in my life, I had to equal things up a bit. He was toying with me. I could see what his game was. He just wanted to get hold of me, and he was going to throw me out, but when he bent over to grab me by the neck—I surprised him.”

There was something sinister in the simple conclusion to his sentence. I leaned forward. I felt the cigarette burning away between my fingers. The little man had paused in his story. He was moistening his lips with his tongue. The seconds of that silence seemed like a whole epoch. I heard a train shriek on its way into Charing Cross Station, the tooting of taxi horns in the Strand, the commissionaires’ whistles showing that the theatres were emptying.

“Yes, I surprised him,” my companion repeated, breaking at last that incredible silence. “The light wasn’t too good, and I’d got hold of my knife when he wasn’t looking. As he came for me, I stabbed him right in the chest. I ain’t strong, but I drove hard that time, and some of the blood on my cheek— that wasn’t all where I fell down—some of it was his. He looked at me kind of helpless-like—couldn’t believe it—and then he crumpled up.”

“You mean that you killed him?” I cried.

The fugitive looked at me plaintively.

“He had chosen to fight me for my wife,” he pleaded. “I couldn’t fight him with my fists. Look at them.”

He held them up—a child’s doubled-up hands and thin at that.

“It had to be made fair,” he went on. “I didn’t ask him to come and steal my wife. He got what was coming to him.”

“And then?” I asked, somehow afraid of another silence.

“Agnes, I think she was fearful I was going to do her in too,” he proceeded. “She rushed out into the street. After that there was nothing for me to do. I’d felt brave enough for the first few minutes. I’d meant to sit there until the police came, but all of a sudden my courage went. I wasn’t glad he was dead any longer. I followed Agnes out into the street, and I ran away, and presently they ran after me. So that’s that!”

He finished his story with a little gulp of satisfaction. I could see him watching eagerly to gather what effect it had had upon me.

“Do you really believe that the man is dead?” I said.

“I hope so,” was the dogged reply. “I tried to kill him.”

We sat and looked at one another—this self-confessed murderer of puny physique and I who had given him refuge. Perhaps in a measure we were each seeking to read what was in the other’s thoughts.

“What are you going to do about me, sir?” he ventured at length.

“I believe,” I decided, after a moment’s hesitation, “that the best advice I could offer you would be to give yourself up.”

“I sha’n’t do that,” he declared sullenly. “I’ve got a chance of getting away, anyhow, if you don’t peach.”

“I shall not peach,” I assured him. “I was responsible for rescuing you from that crowd, and I certainly shall not give you up to the police. On the other hand you must remember this. They lost the trail completely at that alley. When they find that it leads them no farther they will visit these houses one by one—the nearest at any rate—to see if by any chance you could have slipped in.”

“Do you think they’ll come to-night?” he asked anxiously.

“I can’t tell,” I answered. “Have you any plans yourself for getting away?”

“If I could get down to Southampton,” he confided, “I could work a passage on a South American steamer. It wouldn’t be any use my going near Tilbury, or any of the London docks—they’ll be looking for me there—but I’ve got a pal—a ship’s chandler—in Southampton. He’d see me through it.”

“Have you any money?”

“Not a penny. The bit of pay I’d drawn—it wasn’t much, for I’d had to send Agnes something every week—was in my overcoat pocket.”

“And when did you think of trying to get to Southampton?”

“To-night, sir—midnight train,” was the prompt reply. “You see it happened too late to be in the morning papers. There won’t be anything in till the afternoon editions, so except for the police I’ll have a good chance of getting away. If you could lend me a coat and hat, sir—and help me a little about my fare,” he added wistfully.

I crossed the room to my desk and counted out some notes. Then I went to the bathroom and found a last year’s winter overcoat which was too small for me, and a bowler hat.

“Try these,” I enjoined, returning. “The coat will be too large for you, of course, but it might pass muster.”

He put them on quickly.

“If you would lend me a razor for a few minutes, sir,” he suggested.

I waved him off to the bathroom. In ten minutes, with a walking stick and a pair of gloves of mine, clean-shaven and with a cigarette in his mouth, he paraded for my inspection. I pushed the little bundle of notes into his hand.

“I don’t know whether I’m doing right or wrong,” I admitted. “Good luck to you!”

His eyes were brimming with tears. He half extended his hand. I shook it and escorted him downstairs. He passed unnoticed out on to the Terrace and, swinging his stick, disappeared into the shadows. I looked at my watch, and finding that the whole episode had taken longer than I had fancied, gave up my idea of a short visit to the club and went to bed.

I was engaged during the time when fate led me to take a hand in the affairs of Alfred Pegg —-as I afterwards found his name to be—upon some literary work of no great importance to any one except myself. The next morning was wet, so after breakfast I settled down to a few hours’ writing. I had scarcely begun, however, when the bell of my flat rang, and Jennings, my servant, somewhat diffidently disturbed me.

“A young person has called, sir,” he announced. “She says that she must see you at once.”

“Any nameP” I asked.

“No name, sir.”

I was on the point of motioning him away when a sudden thought occurred to me. Without any obvious reason, I connected this visitor with my last night’s adventure.

“What sort of a young person?” I inquired.

Jennings coughed.

“Not a lady, sir, by any manner of means,” he confided. “If I might venture to say so, I do not think she is a young woman you would be likely to know anything about.”

“She knew my name?”

Jennings hesitated.

“Now I come to think of it, sir,” he admitted, “she asked for the gentleman who lived here.”

“Show her in,” I ordered tersely, rather to his surprise.

I understood Jennings’s difficulty as soon as he had ushered in my caller. The young woman was dressed in the somewhat flamboyant fashion of the moment, her skirts were very short and her hair yellow. Her face was not innocent of cosmetics. Her manner was respectful enough, but with that faint indefinable suggestion of underlying freedom which seems to belong to a certain class all over the world. She waited until the door was closed.

“Won’t you sit down?” I invited.

She chose an easy-chair close to me.

“Are you the gentleman who helped Alfred last night?” she demanded.

“Who is Alfred?” I inquired. “And who are you?”

“Alfred is my husband,” she explained. “He’s got himself into a whole lot of trouble. You know all about it?”

“Do I? If you are Alfred’s wife, I suppose you saw what happened?”

She shivered, and half closed her eyes. I had an idea, however, that she was not so greatly affected as she seemed.

“I suppose Alfred wasn’t so much to be blamed,” she admitted. “It was his own fault, though, for marrying me. I was never one to sit quietly at home with a husband at sea for three months. There are some women might do it, I couldn’t. I warned him of that. Then he always knew that Jim Meadows was a pal of mine. He took his risks, Alf did, when he married me. I never thought he’d cut up rough like yesterday though—never thought he had it in him.”

“Well,” I suggested, “tell me exactly what you want of me.”

She looked at me earnestly. I had no longer any doubts concerning her.

“I suppose,” she reflected, “Alfred would about kill me, too, if he knew I’d come here after all he told me of your goodness to him, but what am I to do? I’ve lost them both now. Jim used to help me from time to time, and Alfred always sent his pay regular. Now I’ve got nothing, and I don’t mind telling you I’m not a worker.”

“You arc perfectly sure, then,” I insisted, “that it was not your husband who advised you to apply to me for help?”

“Not on your life!” she replied hastily. “He’d about kill me if he knew. To hear him talk there isn’t another gentleman in the world but you.”

“But how is it that you found your way here?” I asked. “When did you see your husband?”

She smiled triumphantly.

“I just knew what he’d do. Whilst the police were looking for him to double back to some of his old haunts, and the tecs were on their way down to Tilbury, I just made my way to Waterloo and watched all the trains to Southampton. I knew where his great pal lived. Sure enough, last night at twenty minutes to twelve, there he was upon the platform. I didn’t recognise him at first,” she went on—“I’ll admit that—but he started when he saw me, and gave the whole show away. Besides, Colson, his Southampton pal, was with him. They’d met at the booking office, accidental like.”

“Well, if you wanted money,” I remarked, “your husband had some. He could have spared you a little.”

“That’s just what he couldn’t do,” she replied eagerly. “You’d given him ten pounds, and enough for his fare. You see he told me all about it, and how you pushed him in here out of the street. Colson is sending him to sea to-night in a pretty well empty tramp steamer bound for South America. It’ll take all the ten pounds to get him there. The three of us had a drink together, but Colson wouldn’t let him part with a quid. Of course Alf promised to send me some as soon as he’d got a job, but that may be months, and what I want to know is how am I going to live until then?”

“An interesting problem, no doubt,” I remarked, keeping my eyes fixed upon her. “The only thing I don’t see is where it concerns me.”

She smiled at me meaningly.

“Well, it might,” she ventured.

“Explain, won’t you?” I insisted.

She stretched out her hands towards my cigarettes.

“May I have one?”

She helped herself without waiting for my reply, took a mirror from a cheap and tawdry bag which she was carrying, studied her reflection for a moment, and indulged in a little grimace.

“Not looking quite my best this morning,” she remarked. “Not my fault though, after yesterday. Ugh!”

She shivered. Then she went on.

“Couldn’t you help me a little?” she begged, leaning forward in her chair. “Just a few pounds a week to be going on with?”

“Certainly not,” I answered. “There is not the slightest reason why I should.”

“You helped Alfred,” she reminded me. “Surely I’m as well worth spending money on?”

“I helped your husband to escape from the law,” I replied—“perhaps unwisely—but I did so upon impulse, and have not regretted it. His position was a serious one, and I looked upon you as the person responsible for the crime he committed, and not himself.”

Her face hardened.

“Look here,” she said, “I’ve got to live as well as Alfred. I don’t wish him no harm, and I don’t wish you no harm either, but Alfred’s killed my man, and if I go to the police station and tell them where he is, there’ll be something for me out of it, and if I tell them,” she added, “that you helped him to escape last night and gave him the money for his ticket, why there’d be something for me out of that, too.”

“So you’re trying a little blackmailing, are you?” I remarked.

“You can call it what you like,” she replied sullenly. “Much better to be amiable about it and make friends.”

Now, my first impulse was to ring the bell which stood upon my desk, and to have her shown into the street. So far as her threat to me myself was concerned, I was perfectly ready to do so. And then I thought of the poor little man who had sat opposite to me last night, and told me his pitiful story. I somehow felt that the personality of his wife would tell against him rather than for him at the trial.

“You are perfectly at liberty to inform the police of my share in your husband’s escape,” I assured her, “but why don’t you give him a chance?”

“Why should I?”

“Because whatever he did,” I pointed out sternly, “was the result of your infidelity to him.”

“He shouldn’t have used the knife.”

“How else was he to fight?” I demanded. “A puny little fellow like your husband up against a six-foot drayman!”

Curiously enough the idea seemed to afford her an unholy satisfaction.

“Jim could have broke his neck by just squeezing it,” she said.

“Yet you blame your husband for using a knife. Anyhow, there the matter stands. He came home, found you with your latest choice, and revenged himself. The law takes one view; human nature another. If you’re a sensible woman, you won’t do a single thing to prevent his escape.”

She meditated for a moment. She was distinctly no fool, for she changed her tactics very cleverly,

“I’d like Alfred to have another chance,” she declared. “I’d like to let him get away. I wouldn’t even mind going out to South America after him, if he finds a good job, but I ask you, sir, how am I to live and keep myself in any way respectable until he sends me money?”

“Do you wish to keep yourself respectable?” I asked bluntly.

She tossed her head.

“There’s ways and means,” she murmured, with that peculiar smile again at the corners of her lips. “I’m not too fond of hard work and that’s a fact, and there’s no one could say anything against one gentleman friend.”

I considered for a moment.

“Look here,” I said, “so far as I’m concerned, I’m perfectly indifferent as to any information you could hand to the police, but I should like your husband to have another chance. As to anything in the nature of a regular allowance from me to you, that would be out of the question. I will give you twenty-five pounds now in cash, to keep your mouth shut.”

“Fifty,” she suggested, with a covetous gleam in her eyes.

My momentary hesitation was of course fatal. I counted out fifty pounds. She produced a soiled card.

“You wouldn’t like to come now and then and see how I’m getting on?” she invited.

I took no notice of her proposal, nor did I appear to see the card.

“In consideration of that money which I have paid you,” I stipulated, “I shall also expect that when you give your evidence at the inquest, you will do your best for your husband. Your friend is dead; nothing that you say can affect him. Your evidence may make all the difference in case at any time your husband is brought home to stand his trial.”

She rose unwillingly to her feet.

“Can’t think why you take such an interest in that little squib of a man,” she grumbled, “when you treat me as though I were of no account whatever. However, I bear no ill will against Alf, and, as you say, poor old Jim’s gone. Good morning, sir.”

I was holding open the door, and she departed, still unwillingly. I closed the door behind her, and went back to my work. Poor Alfred!

My studious morning, however, was destined to suffer more than one interruption. Barely a quarter of an hour had passed before Jennings again made his appearance. He was carrying a card in his hand, and he had the air of one impressed.

“The gentleman’s waiting, sir,” he announced.

I glanced at the card:

Inspector Brownlow, Scotland Yard

with “C.I.D.” in small letters in the left-hand corner.

I tried to look as though I were used to receiving visits from highy placed officials of the law, but I was inwardly conscious of a certain amount of apprehension.

“Show the gentleman in, Jennings,” I directed.

The inspector, very true to type, formal but in no sense of the word overbearing, made his prompt appearance. He looked at me very keenly. “Major Forester?” he inquired.

“That is my name,*’ I admitted.

“A word with you, if you please, sir.”

I motioned to Jennings, who left us. The inspector, obeying my gesture of invitation, took a chair.

“I have ventured to call, Major Forester,” he began, looking steadily across at me, “to a certain extent unofficially. Last night there was a police chase in this district in which the man who was hunted rather mysteriously got away. You will perhaps have seen something of it, sir?”

*‘I did,” I admitted.

The inspector stroked his chin.

*The police who were following the criminal, and the rest of the crowd,” he continued, “lost him just below your window. Under certain conditions it would come within the province of my duty to make inquiries at the three or four houses—this is one of them—in which the fugitive might have taken refuge.”

“You can search these premises, if you like,” I suggested affably.

“Quite unnecessary, thank you, sir,” the inspector replied. “It will put matters upon a simpler footing if I tell you at once that I have just seen the wife of the wanted man leave your flat. You will perhaps be so kind as to tell me anything you may know with regard to his escape, and also the object of his wife’s visit to you this morning,”

Well, there I was, up against it, and without the slightest inclination to make a bad matter worse by inventing an improbable tale or being committed for contempt of court by refusing to answer reasonable questions. I pushed across the cigarettes—an offer which the inspector declined with a shake of the head. I lit one myself, however, and, leaning back in my chair, told him the whole of the story, with the exception of the destination of the fugitive and his projected means of escape. The inspector was a good-looking man, with a hard, clean face and keen, grey eyes. It was not an expressive face, yet as I told my story I fancied I saw signs first of surprise, then almost of emotion in the way he received the details. When I had finished, he was silent for several moments. He had walked to the window and was standing with his back to me.

“I have told you, Inspector, as much as I intend to,” I concluded, after a brief pause. “If I have committed an offence, I am quite ready to answer for what I have done, but I do not propose to tell you the man’s present whereabouts until I am forced to.”

My visitor picked up his cap.

“I shall trouble you, sir,” he said, “to come with me.”

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“Not precisely—not at the present moment. We will discuss the situation again a little later on. Perhaps you had better go out smoking a cigarette, sir, as I am in uniform. I have no wish to cause you any embarrassment.”

I called for my hat and stick, and we left the flat, the inspector whistled for a taxicab, and gave an address which I failed to catch. We pulled up presently in a side street on the way to the City, before a large and opulent looking public house.

“A question of identification, sir,” my companion explained. “Will you please follow me.”

I obeyed without demur, we entered the place unnoticed, and sat down at a small table in the corner. Almost immediately I rose again to my feet with a little start of surprise. The inspector pushed me back again, however, into my place, and with a peremptory gesture checked the exclamation which had almost escaped me. I stared across the room in blank wonder. Seated upon two chairs at the bar were my friend Alfred and his wife. A bottle of champagne stood before them, and they were devouring with evident satisfaction considerable portions of bread and cheese.

“Our friend, I think,” the inspector remarked.

I looked at him curiously. Suddenly he smiled, and I realized at once what that other emotion had been which had driven him from his chair to the window of my room.

“Ginger Alf, we call him, sir,” the inspector continued, “and I don’t know that there’s a petty criminal upon our records who’s provided the Force with more amusement. This last little affair with you, though, is a fair masterpiece. Of course you have gathered by now that all that tale of his being a ship’s steward and coming back and killing a man was bunkum, and very good bunkum too. Alf isn’t what I should call much of a criminal. A shoplifting job is about his limit, but he is cute—as cute as they make ‘em.”

“But what were they all after him for yesterday, then?” I gasped.

“For pinching the change from a sovereign in a baker’s shop,” the inspector replied with a humorous gleam in his eyes. “He wasn’t as clever as usual when he tried to make a getaway, for the money was found on the floor, and we haven’t a charge against him for the moment. How much did he get out of you, if I might make so bold, sir?”

“I’d rather keep that to myself,” I confessed.

Just at that moment my ginger-haired little friend looked round. He was holding his glass of champagne in one hand and a portion of bread and cheese in the other. He recognised us both, and a look of blank dismay gradually spread itself over his expressive features. A weak smile parted lus lips. He set down his glass and nudged his wife, who also turned her head, and uttered a cry of consternation. The inspector beckoned imperatively, and they slid down from their stools and approached the table.

“Well, Ginger, how are you feeling this morning?” my companion inquired. “Pretty smart you are, aren’t you, Mrs. Pegg?” he went on. “Look as though you’d been paying an afternoon call.”

The lady, at any rate, was not nonplussed.

“I’ve been to see this gentleman,” she announced, indicating me, “and a fat lot of use it was.”

There was a moment’s rather awkward pause. Mr. Alfred Pegg evidently found the situation beyond him.

“I had no idea you were such a blood-tliirsty fellow, Alf,” the inspector proceeded, with a little twinkle in his eyes. “Fancy killing a man just because you found him smoking a pipe in your kitchen! Now, what about that little amount of cash which this gentleman advanced to get you out of the country?”

The fugitive of Adelplii Terrace heaved a deep sigh, and his hand crept towards his breast pocket. I stopped him.

“Too wonderful a performance altogether,” I declared, “to go unrewarded. I have some slight influence in theatrical circles, Mr. Pegg, and if ever you should be thinking of a change of vocation you might pay me a visit.”

A slow, incredulous smile spread gradually over his face. His wife was quicker in grasping the situation.

“Well, you’re a sport!” she exclaimed. “I shouldn’t mind a job myself in a good musical comedy.”

“Run along now, both of you,” the inspector enjoined. “If the gentleman chooses to forget what’s happened, it’s no concern of mine.”

Alfred Pegg’s face as he turned away bore the beatific expression of a charmed and happy child. His wife looked over her shoulder towards me.

“If ever you’re down our way,” she said, “don’t forget I left my card on the corner of your desk.”

They climbed once more on to their stools at the counter; Alfred, perhaps, still a little sheepish, but his wife frankly exultant. I ordered refreshments. The inspector smiled.

“You’re letting them off light, sir,” he observed.

I took a cigarette from my case and tapped it upon the table. I was still watching that cherubic face with the blue eyes and happy mouth.

“The lady was no fool,” I reflected, “but Alfred Pegg earned every penny of his passage to South America.”