Chapter VI: The Quest of the Rose-Ring

I.

_Wanted, old parrakeet skins, in particular the rose-ringed. Description: Green Plumage; black band extending from chin nearly to nape; rose-coloured collar. Length about_ 16 _inches. A fair price given for all and suitable. Apply_ 14a _Lower Marsh, Westminster Bridge Rd._

Herbert Nestle, the astute, the resourceful, stood questioningly behind his principal as the latter ran through the above advertisement submitted to his consideration.

Gilead looked up, with a slightly puzzled expression.

“Certainly an odd requirement, Nestle,” he said. “But what do you see in it?”

“Nothing, indeed, sir,” answered the secretary, “but its oddity. It is a somewhat strange thing that the identical advertisement is repeated in another part of the paper, under the usual ‘Wants’ heading. The demand for parrakeet skins, especially for one description of parrakeet skins, should be urgent.”

“Are they the vogue?”

“Miss Halifax tells me not signally--not more than any other attractive plumage.”

“Nor rare and costly?”

“No, I think not. But of course I know little about such things.”

“Well, Nestle?”

“One might imagine, sir, that it was not parrakeet skins in general, but one parrakeet skin in particular that the advertiser had in view. The rose-ringed, you see, is the only one described in detail.”

“Perhaps it is the most marketable?”

“Yes, sir, perhaps.”

“You do not think that that is the reason?”

“No, frankly, sir, I do not--not a sufficient one to account for the distinction.”

“What is, then?”

“Ah! that, sir, I cannot guess. An inquiry might yield a very ordinary solution, or it might yield a surprising, or even a dramatic one. Things have been quiet of late. I thought no more than that here was a possible opportunity for you.”

“Well, I am obliged to you, Nestle. I will think it over.”

Gilead cogitated the matter, in fact, until he quite kindled to its possibilities. It looked trivial enough on the surface, to be sure; but by now he had had a sufficient experience of the tragedies often hidden under the blandest masks of commonplace. At the end of an hour he separated, folded, and put in his pocket the front page of the _Daily Post_, and, leaving the office, took a taxicab for the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where he enquired for a certain assistant Keeper in the ornithological department, who happened to be a personal friend of his.

“Dereham,” he said abruptly, after an exchange of greetings, “please to tell me about the family of parrakeets, their names and their points.”

Mr Dereham laughed. He was accustomed, like many another of Gilead’s intimates, to regard the young plutocrat as the most courteous, admirable and lovable of cranks.

“O, certainly!” he said, and reeled off a string of names. “There are the Blue Mountain, the Crimson-fronted, the Jerryang, the Ground Parrot, the Dulang, the Coolich, the familiar Budgerigar, the King’s parrot, head, neck and body scarlet, tail shot black and green, the New Holland, with a yellow crest and grey-brown body, the Alexandrine, the rose-ringed, green, with a red collar and black stock, the--”

“Stop. That’s the one I want.”

“O, indeed?”

“Is it rare?”

“Not in the least.”

“I mean any reason for attaching an especial value to it, or to choice specimens of it?”

“None whatever. It’s a quite common species.”

“Where does it come from?”

“O! India and the Malay Archipelago and thereabouts.”

“Could I, do you think, procure a specimen of it--unstuffed; its skin, I mean?”

“Dozens, I have no doubt. Any taxidermist could do your business.”

“Thanks immensely, Dereham; I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Don’t mention it. What’s in the wind now?”

Gilead laughed, shook hands, and bolted.

A couple of days later he walked into Lower Marsh Street, with a brown-paper parcel under his arm.

It was a dreary depressing morning, brown grease under foot and brown fog in the air. The street from its appearance might have been sinking into the ooze and slime of the old Lambeth marshes from which it took its name. The basement windows of its houses were blinded with mud; a steady precipitate of soot descended upon it from impenetrable glooms. The moist squalor of the scene, the low unclassified shops, the shambling traffic and half stealthy half sinister aspect of a majority of the populace, wrought sombrely upon the young man’s spirits. It was in such places, he reflected, that the breed of human carrion-flies was hatched, swarming, to poison civilization, out of these bodies contaminate and decomposing carcases of houses. A sense of foreboding was already on him as he paused in front of a seemingly unoccupied shop and read, written on the head-board over its closed door and empty window: 14a _J. Jenniver Clear-starcher_ 14a.

Of all trades the least appropriate, one might have thought, to the district. Gilead, hesitating a moment, looked about him. It came to him suddenly how empty the street was of policemen. He had not remembered, to be sure, its contiguity to the New Cut. He was standing in the close vicinity of penny gaffs and penny dreadfuls, of the indigenous coster and the cosmopolitan flat-catcher, of brokers’ shops, Sunday trading, chronic drunkenness, buffetted faces and vice in its most sodden aspect. But, if the realization gave him a thrill, it left his nerves unshocked. He was always imperturbable in his unselfconscious sanctity of motive. He felt his strength to be “as the strength of ten” because his heart was pure--though he did not, like Sir Galahad, applaud the fact in the first person.

Now suddenly, as he stood indetermined, and wondering if, after all, this quest was proper to his custom, the door of the shop opened, and there appeared in the aperture the figure of a young woman, speaking back, as she emerged, to someone within:--

“Yes, same place as the other, Doddington Grove. I say, I must hurry. So-long, Georgy!”

She ran out--a slight anæmic girl, a sempstress by her pallor, soberly dressed, but elaborate as to her head and low as to her neck--and, with a wondering stare at Gilead, sped on her way towards the tram terminus hard by. Regarding her retreat an instant, Gilead turned to see the figure of a man standing conning him from the shop-door.

He was a pert, wiry, truculent-looking young fellow, the very type of combative cockneyism. His nose was retroussé, his cheeks pink; an incipient red-gold moustache on his lip had been coaxed into two little upstanding stings or spikes; his cloth cap, tilted back from his forehead, revealed a rudimentary ‘cow-lick’, elaborated from a somewhat cropped head of the same Apollonian hue. He stood whistling softly, with his hands thrust loosely into his trouser pockets. Gilead stepped towards him.

“Jenniver?” he said. “Is that the name?”

“You may lay on it, my lord,” answered the young man, coolly blocking the way.

“O!” said Gilead; and produced his newspaper extract. “I came about an advertisement.”

The stranger nodded, eyeing the brown-paper parcel.

“Yus?” he said.

“I have a skin or two here of the sort you mention.”

“O! have you?” said the young man. He appeared to consider a moment. “Well, no harm in looking at ’em,” he said. “Come in.”

He led the way into a little dirty dismal shop with shelves and a counter, and all as empty as the window. A door at the back seemed to give upon remote and silent regions. There was not a sign of traffic, of any description whatever, in the whole place.

The stranger accepted the parcel, opened it, and revealed half a dozen parrakeet skins of sorts. He turned them over, examining each minutely, and looked up.

“You’ve forgotten about the ‘old’,” he said.

“Old!” echoed Gilead.

“Now, look here,” said the young man, in a sudden access of violence; “what the hell’s your little game?”

Gilead, taken completely by surprise, lacked words to answer.

“You’re a toff,” went on the stranger. “These skins ain’t old, but fresh-bought, with the importers’ labels still on ’em. What the devil do you mean by trying to pass them off on me as old?”

“I really didn’t realize that age was a sine qua non,” said the customer.

“Sine what?” said the young man. “O! didn’t you, now? You’re a pusson of observation, you are. Now, what do you mean?”

“Frankly,” said Gilead, who had recovered his self-possession, “I don’t quite know. My object was to find out what you did.”

“O! was it?” said the dealer, with a violently derisive emphasis. “Jest so.”

“There’s a skin there,” said Gilead, “which answers exactly to the description of the one you most require.”

“So I see,” said the dealer.

“Only it’s not old?”

“Only it’s not old.”

“Well, I suppose there’s a virtue in antiquity.”

“Don’t you know there is, being a toff?”

“I confess,” said Gilead, “that mangy plumes excite no emotion in me.”

“You’d understand their use, maybe, if you was curator to a perishing museum,” answered the dealer.

Gilead opened his eyes.

“Is _that_ the explanation?” he said. “I humbly beg your pardon, Mr Jenniver. My curiosity is rebuked. Come, I apologize. But the advertisement really seemed to me such an odd one that I couldn’t resist following it up.”

“Well,” said the young man, with some appearance of relief, “you let your friends know my object, and we’ll say no more about it. I dussay as there’s plenty of fine ladies of your acquaintance what would like to get a price for their cast-offs.”

“It’s likely enough,” said Gilead. “I’m sorry to have seemed so obtrusive. Good morning, Mr Jenniver.”

The young man did not answer, and the customer left the shop. He walked rapidly at first, urged by a certain sense of humiliation; but in a little his steps had slackened, and he was proceeding on his way sunk deep in reverie.

The fact was that the dealer’s explanation, accepted as so plausible in its first utterance, was, as he reconsidered it, failing more and more to satisfy him. Perishing museums, forsooth! Was it in reason to arrest decay by patching it with decay? Besides surely secondhand stuff of the sort was easily procurable without having recourse to expensive advertisements. The elucidation appeared to him on reflection to have been rather inspired, and on the instant, by his own comments. And then the empty shop, the sinister neighbourhood, the aggressiveness and obvious suspicion of the dealer that he was being got at? No, he was convinced that he had actually touched the hem of some mystery, harmless possibly, but so far without a shadow of a clue to its meaning. And yet, the more puzzling it appeared, the more was he stimulated to persist in an endeavour to unravel it. He confided his non-success to Nestle when he reached the office.

The secretary listened very attentively to the end.

“In a matter of this sort, sir,” he said, “any word linking an outer with an inner association is of value. The young woman, you say, mentioned Doddington Grove. Well, my advice is, transfer your investigations to Doddington Grove.”

“It seems ridiculous, Nestle. What possible base have I to my inquiries?”

“A morbid craving for old parrakeet skins, sir,” said the secretary.

Gilead laughed.

“I am half afraid,” he said, “that the cause of the Quest has given me a morbid craving for mares’ nests. Where is Doddington Grove?”

It was not likely that there would be a second of that name, and in fact, referring to the map of London, they traced the street they sought to the locality of Kennington Park. Gilead made his way thither that very afternoon.

He found the Grove to occupy one side of a dully respectable little congeries of squares and places covering a considerable estate to the north of the Park. There was nothing more remarkable about it than about any other semi-suburban avenue of bricks and mortar. The houses were the substantial middle-class houses of an orthodox neighbourhood, detached for the most part, and cased in stucco. A parrot in a brass cage standing in a window was the nearest approach to a clue vouchsafed him. Clearly the place itself was utterly barren of suggestion; and indeed what else could he have expected?

Pausing at length, and gazing about him, the young gentleman lapsed into a good-humoured smile and turned to retreat. “No,” he cogitated. “I haven’t the faculty, I’m afraid. I can’t produce a rabbit, or even a parrakeet, from an empty hat.”

So he decided, and walked away--and there in a moment before his eyes lay the end of the very clue he sought to follow. Fate, no doubt, had been captivated as always by the sweetness and modesty of his disposition.

For many days succeeding that excursion Mr Balm, during his somewhat rare visits to the Agency, appeared deeply preoccupied and rather unapproachable. Even the privileged amanuensis would venture no attempt to penetrate his reserve, though the heart in her fair breast suffered some pangs thereby, which, in a baser nature, might have been attributed to jealousy. She would have been indeed quite satisfied to leave him to himself, were she assured that that was the sole company he affected; but men, she knew, were often, when appearing most alone, most particularly vis-à-vis with visionary comrades, and the image of some rival to her own and the secretary’s interests occupying that silent and inscrutable mind would occasionally rise to perturb her.

How her apprehensions were relieved will appear in the sequel, where we are to pass at a leap from the meagre opening to the prolific close of that same little affair of the bird-skins.

II.

Mr Ingram, Chief Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department, was sitting in his office at Scotland Yard one chill afternoon, when a respected visitor, Mr Gilead Balm, sent in his name with a request for an immediate interview on a matter of urgency. The gentleman was at once shown in.

Gilead, courteous and quiet as ever, failed nevertheless to conceal from the astute officer some evidences of suppressed excitement in his demeanour. There was a suggestion in his face of a subdued self-satisfaction, of a conscious victoriousness, as it were, which both impressed and tickled the Superintendent.

“Well, Mr Balm,” he said, “you’ve pulled it off single-handed this time, and no mistake.”

Gilead, taking the chair offered him, with an expression in which astonishment and a certain twinkling sobriety fought for mastery, asked “Pulled what off?”

“I haven’t a notion,” said the Superintendent.

Gilead stared a moment and then laughed.

“What! Is my manner such an index?” he said. “Well, I confess I am just a little elated--or conceited. Please to read that, Ingram.”

The Superintendent accepted and examined the page of the _Daily Post_ offered him.

“The marked ‘ad’?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve read it, sir.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Make?” The Superintendent, quite at a loss, shook his head in a guarded way.

“Anything suspicious?” demanded the client.

“Not that I can see.”

“Ah!” Gilead mutely requested the return of the paper, folded, and restored it to his pocket. “Now, I’ll tell you, Ingram,” he said quietly. “That advertisement represents a quite transcendent piece of fraud and trickery, and, with no more to go upon than you see, I’ve traced it, as I believe, to its source. Could any one of your men have done better, do you think? But I wont believe he could, and I’m just as proud as Punch of my success. If I’m wrong, I will cry off all detective work for the future. But I may be right, and yet miss my quarry through circumstance or misjudgment. I want you to lend me a plain-clothes officer, a strong, skilful, and trustworthy man.”

“Certainly, Mr Balm. Will you tell me--”

“I’ll tell you nothing, Ingram. I’m going to claim to myself all the honour and glory of this business. I’ll tell you nothing; but--yes, I’ll ask you a question. Do you know George Lightfoot by name?”

“Wait--wait--George Lightfoot? Yes, sir, I remember the man.”

“And the crime for which he was sentenced?”

“Yes, to be sure.”

“Would it be legal to arrest him on a charge of larceny arising out of that crime, but subsequent to it?”

“Better take out a warrant.”

“Very well, procure me a warrant for the arrest of George Lightfoot, and send it on with the officer to the Agency.”

“You won’t tell me the charge?”

“No.”

“Well, sir, we must stretch a point for you. What time do you want them?”

“At six o’clock this evening, punctually. I undertake full responsibility for this course, you understand, Ingram? If anything, in any way, should miscarry, I am the one to blame.”

His manner had grown suddenly very grave and earnest. He left the Superintendent curious, but impressed against his will.

At six o’clock to the tick the detective arrived at the office, presenting the appearance of a stalwart, silent man, who knew how to keep his thoughts to himself. Gilead, after a few words of instruction, slipped an electric torch into his pocket (a precaution impressed upon him through his late experiences in the Empty House), locked up the place, and, descending to the hall, deposited the keys with the porter and issued with his companion into the street.

It was a shrill inclement evening. Bitter north-easterly winds had succeeded to the fogs of the week past, and the mud in the roads was long crumbled into an arid dust, which was swept up in clouds and blown in stormy veils above the house-tops. The pavements were as white as picked bones; the very flames of the lamps shivered in their little glass-houses; one took the stinging blasts headforemost, grinding them in palpable grit between one’s teeth, and, detesting all things and people, butted aggressive into struggling pedestrians, and gloried in the proverbial coldness of charity.

Gilead was constitutionally incapable of such spleen; yet even his invincible courtesy found a difficulty in keeping, so to speak, its equilibrium; and when, as it once happened, a little cold grimy hand, gripping a couple of match-boxes, was thrust across his path, he drove half-consciously upon the obstruction, and scattered it to the winds.

The act, repented as soon as done, had been due more to a sense of urgency than of irritation; but it had the effect of checking his somewhat excited career, and of restoring to him his moral balance. The fortunate urchin, having profited by it to the tune of a gold piece, dropped voicelessly behind.

The two men beating up Victoria Street, and across the cold comfort of Broad Sanctuary, headed for Westminster Bridge with set teeth. If they had attempted speech, the wind would have howled them down. It was a charging voice, a destructive terrorist, that shivered the lamps on the river into splinters of light, and hammered screeching on the doors and windows of the timid, and blew such an accumulation of human fuel into the public-house bars that they blazed and roared again.

It was for this reason, no doubt, that Lower Marsh exhibited, when they turned into it, a darkly depopulated aspect. Its traffic seemed shrunk to a minimum, the bones of its squalid ugliness were laid bare, the small grime of humanity that drifted down its pavements appeared of less account than the dust whirled about its lamp-posts. It was in the shadowy neutral ground between two of these that Gilead halted his companion, and pointed to the name of J. Jenniver written above their heads.

“It’s here,” he whispered--“and so is he.”

A weak perpendicular edge of light drawn upon the lowered blind of the shop seemed indeed to witness to the presence of someone in the back room, the door of which was patently ajar.

“I never doubted that he would be,” whispered Gilead, excusably vainglorious. “We’d better not delay. He’s vicious and suspicious. Now, officer! And be prepared for contingencies.”

“You won’t wait, then, sir, for the young woman’s arrival?”

“No, I think not. Better make sure of our bird in the hand. We shall find her more amenable to argument when once we’ve settled with her confederate. She’s little to blame, poor creature--his tool, no worse. Now.”

“Very well, sir. Stand by. It’s like he’ll take us for her.”

He tapped on the door. Almost with the sound, the streak of light vanished from the blind, and left all in darkness.

No response followed. They waited a breathless minute.

“Queer!” muttered the detective. “The young woman can’t have arrived before us, I suppose?”

“Not if I’m right in my calculations,” said Gilead. “Try again.”

The officer knocked a second time, and louder. “It’s all right,” he whispered in a moment. “I hear steps. He’s coming.”

But still the door was not opened--only some indefinable consciousness of a presence standing silent behind it was conveyed to them.

The detective rapped again.

Then suddenly, so close that it made Gilead start, a voice spoke through the keyhole--an odd strained little voice, with a hiccup in it.

“Who’s there? What d’you want?”

Gilead, glancing at the detective, put his finger to his lips and bent to respond:

“I’ve brought some bird skins.”

“I don’t want no bird skins,” answered the voice.

“But you advertised.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got all I need.”

“Won’t you look at them?”

“No.”

“Just a squint, while I stand here. I’m short of cash.”

“Wos that to me? You clear out.”

“You advertised, you know. I’m not going to be put off without a reason. If you won’t open, I’ll kick the door in.”

“Gosh! will you? Now, look ’ere; I’ll consider of ’em just this once to oblige you, if you’ll pass ’em in and take my answer and git. Is that a bargain?”

“All right.”

A chain rattled; a key was turned; the door opened an inch or two--and quick as thought the detective shot into the aperture an inflexible munition boot. There followed an oath, a crash; the vicious elastic figure of Mr Lightfoot, alias Jenniver, glimmered one moment in semi-darkness, and the next they were in, and the man was gone.

“The room behind! Quick!” cried Gilead.

They were round and into it on the echo of his cry. As they stumbled forward blindly--for the light had been extinguished--a flash and explosion met them full face, and Gilead tripped and half fell against the wall. But in the very act he remembered his electric torch, and whipped it out and pressed the button. The sudden flash revealed two men down upon the floor, wrestling together in a mortal grip.

“Make for his revolver!” gasped the detective--“quick, before he can get at it.”

Gilead saw where the weapon had fallen, and, snatching at it on the instant, presented it at the young dealer’s head.

“Give in, Lightfoot,” he said, in a voice as cool as judgment. “I allow you two seconds.”

With a ghastly groan, the man rolled over and surrendered.

They got him to his feet and handcuffed. From the moment of his defeat he appeared void of all volition. His face was as grey as streaked putty; the sockets of his eyes were white; drops of sweat stood on his forehead. They relit the gas, and helped him all limp into a chair, where he sat half-collapsed.

“Good God!” whispered Gilead: “has he shot himself?”

“Not he,” said the detective, coolly picking the dust of the fray from his coat. “A mercy he didn’t one of us. You’re all right, sir?”

“Yes. And you?”

“A bit scorched--no more. I wonder at you, Lightfoot. You’ve made a bad mess of this business, my lad.”

Gilead uttered a sudden cry.

“It’s there! Look!”

The room was empty, save for a common chair or two and a bare deal table; _and in the middle of the latter lay a single folded parrakeet skin, green, with a rose and black collar round its neck_.

He stood staring a moment, then went and lifted and balanced the thing in his hand. And, so holding it, he turned, with a lost expression on his face.

“Why,” he said, “I must have miscalculated after all, and she’s been here before us.”

The detective uttered a quick exclamation:--

“Look at the man! What’s taken him?”

He was writhing and tearing at his bonds. Suddenly he broke into a whining unearthly cry, that tailed off into a string of inarticulate blasphemies.

“Officer,” said Gilead whitely: “there’s something beyond what I looked for in this business--something, I believe, infinitely blacker and more deadly. Stay you here while I go over the house.”

The prisoner, straightening himself convulsively, moved as if to spring.

“All right, sir,” said the detective, prompt to interpose. “You can leave him to me.”

Gilead, clipping his little torch into flame, hurried instantly out of the room. A deadly constricted feeling was at his heart; he looked with certainty for some horror to be revealed in a moment. Yet he had no least reason for blaming himself. He had merely watched, not directed, the course of events. Indeed, Providence, it might be said, had appointed in him its unconscious Nemesis. Would only that it had permitted him to forestall in that character the deed he feared.

In the passage he paused an instant to shut and relock the front door, which had remained open from their first entrance. Then he turned to consider his ground. A narrow flight of stairs rose before him; beyond, at the black end of the passage, a second dropped into the basement. He mounted the former in the first instance, his heart beating thickly, and came to a little cluster of rooms, three in all, which revealed nothing but dust and emptiness and peeling wall-paper. Satisfied that they contained, and could contain, no secret, he left them, and, returning to the passage, descended to the basement. He knew now that what he sought, if it existed, must be hidden somewhere here. A sense of something monstrous to be revealed tingled in his veins; stealthy things seemed to rustle and escape before him; at the bottom of the flight he hesitated, momentarily sickened from his quest.

What business was it of his? A bugbear, very likely, of his own fancy! The shock of unforeseen defection in an act of larceny was no doubt sufficient to account for the state of the man above.

A glow came to his face in the darkness. He was glad that heaven and he had been alone together with that shameful thought. He breathed out all his pusillanimity in a great scornful sigh--and the sigh was answered.

He stood a moment as if paralysed. It had been little and tremulous, but unmistakable--an echo, perhaps, of his own. Vaulted darkness gasped at him in front, exhaling a smell of cold flags and cold soot. Close beside him was the near-closed door of the coal-cellar. In a sudden spasm of horror he pushed this open, and, casting his light before him, saw the body of a young girl lying prone upon her back on the stones.

Now a great sorrow and pity came on the instant to nerve him. He bent to look into the bloodless face and saw its eyes closed, its white lips parted; but the nostrils quivered slightly and he knew that she still lived. There was little need to question what had struck her down. High on the bosom of the cheap frock she wore was a crimson splash, and from under her shoulder spread and crawled a black and sluggish little pool.

But she was not dead. God help him yet to mend a deed so foul and inhuman! He rose--hope was to the swift. As he turned to go he saw leaning against the wall a spade and mattock, and he shuddered in the knowledge of their purpose.

It was with a face as set as stone that he came hurrying into the little room above.

“He has shot her,” he said. “She is lying in the cellar--but she still breathes. Look to him there while I run for a doctor.”

He was gone before the officer could speak. But, at his words, the abject figure in the chair had ceased to moan and writhe. It sat up; it made an attempt with its damp manacled hands to repoint the little red spurs on its lip; it spoke even in a thick unsteady voice:--

“I’ll make you all pay hell for this. It’s a plot to rob me. She shot herself--she did on my living oath. What have you done with my rose-ring?”

The detective exerted some cool pressure.

“It’s my duty to warn you, Lightfoot,” he said, “that I’ve a warrant for your arrest in my pocket, and that whatever you say now will be used as evidence before the magistrate.”

III.

“Of course it is an acquired taste,” said Gilead. “All education is acquired. Do you like olives?”

“No, I can’t bear them,” said Miss Halifax, making a face over the unexpected question.

“They are invaluable,” he answered, “in bringing out the bouquet of claret. So it is with that Japanese print” (he was standing with her before a fine hachirakaki by Masonobu, which hung upon the wall). “Take it in the right spirit, and then see what that exquisite little arrangement by Whistler yonder owes to it. Why you yourself, you know, are truly insensible of your obligations to this same Masonobu among others.”

It was a Sunday afternoon, and he had invited his secretary and amanuensis to tea with him in the Albany, with the express purpose of relating to them, for their personal and private edification, the history in detail of the bird-skins, about which, during the whole day preceding, he had maintained an amused but impenetrable reserve. They knew that he had been successful in his quest, and they knew little else. He tantalized them even now by delaying the recital.

“_My_ obligations!” said the young lady, raising her brows in a very pretty puzzled way. “How, Mr Balm?”

“Why,” said he, “to what, beyond a naturally refined taste, do you think you owe the judgment so charmingly displayed in the decoration of your own rooms? It was these early Japanese artists who were as responsible as any for the growth among us of a spirit of true appreciation of the beauty and value of line in decorative composition. You must really learn to honour your artistic ancestry, Miss Halifax.”

She sighed.

“I will try; only I do wish my ancestry had adopted a more attractive convention for its faces. They have no more expression than eggs. It will do, I suppose, if I taste Masonobu and drink in Whistler. You tell me, you know, to love the wine for the olive, and not the olive for the wine.”

He laughed.

“That is well answered; but I don’t despair of you yet. You shall come by and by to love the olive for its own sake. Yes, that is the Pigalle.”

“Isn’t it a dear!” she exclaimed, this time with a whole-hearted admiration.

“It ought to be,” he answered. “I gave three thousand guineas for it.”

She smiled lovelily on him, thanking him silently for the little whimsical significant confidence. “Mr Balm,” she said plaintively: “when, _please_, are we to hear about the Quest?”

“At once,” he answered. “I was only waiting your command. I am just spoiling, as the Americans say, for an audience. You shall own, Nestle, that I have managed, in spite of the French proverb, to draw oil from a wall.”

He brought and settled them snugly about the fire, went to a cabinet, and, returning with some article in his hand, placed a little occasional table in their midst ready for its reception.

“You will remember,” he said, “the terms of the advertisement, and the emphasis laid on a particular species of parrakeet skin--the rose-ringed, in short. It was from the first our astute secretary’s opinion, Miss Halifax, that the advertiser had in view less that species than a single example of that species, and he was perfectly right. I hold the proof in my hand.”

He offered it for their inspection. Nestle, uttering an exclamation, bent to look.

“Take it,” said Gilead, “examine it, weigh it, and return it to me. What do you make of it?”

“It answers to the description certainly,” said the secretary--“green plumage, rose and black band. It is about sixteen inches long, and it has been worn. Two things only strike me.”

“What?”

“The weight of its head, and the fact that it has eyes.”

“Precisely. Now will you lay it down here awhile? It came into my hands the night before last under pretty tragic circumstances. There was an attempt at murder--yes indeed there was, Miss Halifax--of which an unhappy girl was the victim. I arrived on the scene too late to prevent the crime, but not too late to have the criminal arrested red-handed. It was only then that I reached a final solution of the problem I had set myself to unravel, and which solution it needed no more than a single piece of corroborative evidence, since supplied, to confirm. By the courtesy, or perhaps I should say the particular favour, of Chief Superintendent Ingram, I am allowed the temporary custody of these pièces-de-conviction. Yes, Miss Halifax?”

“The girl? the poor victim?”

“She is not, I am happy to say, so mortally hurt as at first it was feared. There is a chance, at least, of her recovery. The bullet has been extracted.”

“The bullet?”

“I am beginning, you see, at the end, like a Chinese book.”

“O! please to go on. I will not interrupt you again.”

“As often and as much as you like. By the way, where _am_ I to begin?”

“O! from your visit to Doddington Grove. I know so far.”

“Very well. Now, as you may suppose, I found nothing whatever in Doddington Grove, a respectable street in a respectable neighbourhood, to afford me the slightest clue to what I sought. I had, in fact, after a hopeless investigation, come to realise my complete inability to make bricks without straw, when chance, or Providence, directed my steps, in retreating, past a shop in the Kennington Road, in the window of which I saw something which brought me to an instant stand. This something was nothing less than a bundle of bright-coloured bird-skins, tied round with a piece of red tape.

“I went at once into the shop. It was one of those second-hand concerns, used by small brokers for the disposal of articles picked up by them at sales; and I ascertained without any difficulty that the packet of skins--which I bought there and then--represented the remainder of a considerable parcel, the bulk of which had been sold to a hat and bonnet shop proprietor in the Borough. The original lot, had, I learned, figured in its entirety among the effects in a sale at a house in Doddington Grove; and with small pains I was able to discover the number of that house, the date of the auction, and the name of the late tenant, who it appeared, had been a Mrs Barclay Rivers, a widow.

“So far, so good. I had secured at length a definite base from which to conduct operations, and I felt considerably elated. I must beg you both to bear always in mind that from first to last I was my own sole detective in this matter. Any doubt in that respect would seem to tarnish my laurels, of which I am inordinately vain.

“Now, to continue. There was here, you will perceive, at least a certain relation established between a Mrs Barclay Rivers and a packet of bird-skins, with the man and girl in Lower Marsh for the hyphen connecting them as it were. How to ascertain the nature of the relationship, the degree of kindred so to speak, was the question. Obviously, the simplest course was to hunt out the widow herself, and to make a frank offer to her of my services; and that was the course I adopted.

“The auctioneers who had sold the property were fortunately in a position to acquaint me with the present address of the lady. She was living in lodgings in the Earl’s Court Road, they informed me, and, to supplement her income, which was small, she gave music lessons. They opined that her husband’s death--which occurred in the Malay Peninsula some eighteen months ago--had left her very ill provided for, and that the sale of her household effects had been due to that cause. I must confess that both here and elsewhere I did not hesitate to quote, when necessary, my credentials. You may think that hardly playing the game; in which case I offer no defence. But it saved a world of explanations.

“I called upon Mrs Rivers. She was accessible, of course, professionally, and I took the opportunity to introduce myself and to state my object in visiting her. Fortunately she was well acquainted with the reputation of our Agency, and from that first moment all, so far as she was concerned, was plain sailing. It is unnecessary for me to enter into particulars; but I may say, generally, that she gave me her complete confidence.”

Miss Halifax, fluttering butterfly lashes, shot one glance at the secretary. He sat absorbed and intent, and her lids fell again.

“She was the widow, it appeared,” continued Gilead, “of a Captain Barclay Rivers, who, at the time of his death, had been abroad on a scientific expedition in the Malay Peninsula, and its contiguous islands. Some few weeks before the news of his death had reached her, there had arrived from him through a shipping agency, and directed in his handwriting, a small bale of bird-skins, but unaccompanied by any letter or notification of their despatch. There was nothing about the parcel to lead her to attach any particular significance to its contents, or to any part of its contents, and she put the skins aside, after a brief examination, fully expecting to hear from her husband by the next mail. Instead there came to her the tragic information of his death from swamp fever.

“She was left--needless to elaborate the reasons--in such restricted circumstances that it became necessary for her to realize on her every stick of property, and to retire into obscurity. The parcel of skins was included in the sale, and it found a purchaser. Such was the sum total of her testimony. She had no reason for assuming that the parcel had contained anything extraordinary, and, interested as she was in my view of the case, she was inclined to the belief, I fancy, that it would lead me to no more than the discovery of a beautiful mare’s-nest. Questioned about the contents of the bale, she admitted that, to the best of her memory, it _had_ contained a single skin of the sort described; but she could not in the least recollect if that especial skin had been included in the lot sold by auction. She had, however, no reason for supposing otherwise.

“Well, here was something more gained, if a little less than suggestive. I had, of course, already minutely examined my purchase. It included no rose-ring, and yielded no solution. My next step was to return to the broker’s shop, to enquire if any previous customer had overhauled the packet that I had bought. Judge of my gratification when I learned that a week or two before, a man, answering in every description to my friend of Lower Marsh, had considered, and, after a careful scrutiny, had declined, the purchase. From that moment I saw the connection proved, and knew that it needed no more than tact and persistence to bring me to the heart of the mystery.

“Now it occurred to me that the bonnet shop in the Borough--known as Mélanies’--which had acquired from the broker the bulk of the lot purchased by him, should form my next subject for enquiry, and thither I bent my steps one morning about mid-day. As I reached the place, by a truly extraordinary chance the hands were trooping out to dinner, and amongst them I saw and recognised at once the figure of the girl whom I had seen issuing from the empty shop in Lower Marsh. Fortunately I passed unobserved by her, or she might have suspected something. But it came to me in a flash that she was in league with Jenniver, or whatever the man’s name might be, to trace the rose-ring to some customer of the firm, and that since she had been presumably unsuccessful, the rose-ring could not figure among the stock at Mélanies’, and therefore it was useless my pursuing my enquiries further in that direction. Really, I think, Miss Halifax, I was inspired in all this.”

“I am sure you were, Mr Balm. What was your next step?”

“Why, to induce Mrs Barclay Rivers to come with me to see if by any chance she could identify the man Jenniver himself. It was just possible, and it might explain everything.”

“And did she?”

“She came, with great reluctance. But I was by then, I am afraid, so eager in the quest that I would have abducted her had she refused. My intention was to introduce her to the man as one of those fashionable acquaintances whose custom he had desired; but he saved me the trouble. As we approached the shop he himself, accompanied by the identical young woman of my former acquaintance, issued from it, and the two, unconscious of our presence (it was raining, and our umbrellas were up), went down the street before us. ‘There he is,’ I whispered; ‘and the very girl I told you about with him. Quick! Do you recognize either?’ ‘Both, I am sure,’ answered Mrs Rivers, much agitated. ‘The girl, I am certain, is Annie Milner, a former maid of mine, whom I had to send away for misconduct; and he--wait--I seem to know him; but I’m so flustered.’ At that moment the two stopped at a door, and the man knocked--a double rap. ‘O!’ said my companion on the instant. ‘I know him: He was a postman in our district.’ I started; I turned her swiftly about. I almost ran her from the neighbourhood--for she had given me in those few words the clue I desired, and from that moment everything was clear to me.”

“Mr Balm! How? O, please go on!”

“One moment. I went straight, after seeing her home, to Scotland Yard, and, by virtue of those same credentials, secured an examination of the portraits of convicted criminals. The man of Lower Marsh figured amongst them. ‘Who is he?’ I asked. ‘George Lightfoot’ was the answer; ‘a Kennington postman sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for letter-stealing, and discharged, after serving his term, within the last few weeks.’ There, Miss Halifax!”

“O! but I’m not there, indeed.”

“Why, you see, Captain Barclay Rivers _had_ written a letter to his wife, telling her that he was forwarding the bale of skins, and mentioning a secret connected with one of them; and that letter Lightfoot had stolen amongst others. But, before he could formulate any plan for acting upon the information contained in it, he was trapped and arrested on another charge and sent to prison, only to find upon his release that the lady had been made a widow, and the bale sold and its contents scattered during his confinement. Hence his advertisement, and, generally, his determined efforts to trace the several items of the parcel; hence, moreover, his subornation and ruin of the unhappy girl at Mélanies’, whom he had known and courted when he was a postman and she a maid at Mrs Rivers’s, and whom he had, since his release, tracked to the shop in the Borough, and won to his nefarious purposes.”

“And you saw through it all in that single instant?”

“I will not go so far. But I had at least a vision of the truth. Still there remained to discover the nature of the secret, and the whereabouts of the lost skin--for by now I was convinced that the rose-ring, and the rose-ring alone, the one specimen of its kind which, it would seem, the parcel contained, held the solution of the mystery. Well, I discovered it; but at a fatal moment for one poor creature.”

“O, don’t stop!”

“I must hurry rather. There is much ground to cover in a few words. You will take for granted, Miss Halifax, the tedious process of inquiry they represent. In brief, I questioned Mrs Rivers as to her former ménage, and learned that in the time of Annie Milner there had been but one other servant in the house, namely a cook, Bessie Cotton by name. It was just possible that _she_ might know something about the lost rose-ring.

“I traced this girl to the situation she had procured through her former mistress, from that situation to another; finally, to small lodgings she was occupying in the neighbourhood of Newington Butts. I found her at home, and opened upon her at once on the subject of the rose-ring. To my amazement she broke into a passion of tears and half coherent protestations, denouncing, as I understood, her former fellow-servant Annie Milner for having brought the law on her--as she supposed, in my person. It was long before I could convince her that I was not a plain-clothes constable, long before I could quiet and reassure her; but I succeeded at length, and persuaded her little by little to make a full confession to me of the truth. And what do you think it was?”

“It was she who had stolen the rose-ring?”

“It was she--a mere impulsive misdemeanour--a mere sin of vanity, committed for the purpose of adorning a cherished hat--which hat still survived so adorned. Seeing the parcel of bright skins so little regarded she had succumbed one day to the temptation of the rose-ring, attracted by its eyes and its singularity, and had appropriated it to herself.

“But now observe the irony of circumstance--or was it, perhaps, an instance of subconscious telepathy, of simultaneous suggestion? Anyhow, it appeared, Annie Milner and I had conceived at the same moment the same hypothesis about this girl her former fellow-servant; only--Annie had been an hour or so beforehand with me in giving practical effect to _her_ hypothesis. In short, she had paid a visit that very morning to Bessie Cotton during her dinner hour, had wormed the truth out of her, and had demanded the hat itself as the price of her silence. And Bessie had yielded up her plunder intact, and Annie had carried it away--whither?

“For a moment, as you may imagine, I felt completely nonplussed. And then it occurred to me that Annie, having already sacrificed her dinner time to this quest, would for certain postpone carrying her prize to Lower Marsh until after business hours. I acted promptly upon that conjecture--which fortunately proved the correct one--you shall hear with what result.”

Gilead then related to his absorbed listeners the adventure with which we are already acquainted.

“We cannot gather,” he said at the end, “whether the villain had predetermined upon murdering his victim, with a view to silencing an untrustworthy confederate, or whether, as he himself declares, she drove him to madness at the last by coquetting with him, witholding her capture, and threatening to give the whole thing away unless he agreed to her extravagant terms. The fact that he made a jealous preserve of the premises--which he was renting for a few weeks at a few shillings a week from a local landlord--the fact of the spade and mattock in the cellar--these are at least subjects for grave suspicion. But likely enough we shall never know the truth.”

“And the mystery, Mr Balm. O, Mr Balm--please!”

Gilead laughed at the impatient young lady, as he raised the parrakeet-skin from the table.

“I told you,” he said, “that there was but one missing link needed to complete the chain of evidence. That missing link was, of course, Captain Barclay Rivers’s letter, which was found on Lightfoot. It told, in brief, of the Captain’s startling discovery, among the ruins of a temple of Kandy in Ceylon, of an almost priceless gem; of his apprehensions that this treasure might be lost or stolen from him in his varied wanderings, and of his final determination to send it home in a parcel of the skins of birds shot by him, concealed within the head of a rose-ringed parrakeet, the only specimen of its kind, he was careful to explain--with an elaborate description of the bird for his wife’s instruction--that the bundle contained.”

With these words Gilead, lowering the skin for the eager scrutiny of his two guests, laid open the body, and showed them how the whole cavity of the skull was filled with a single dark stone, which, projecting to the sockets, seemed to form the eyes. Then, delicately inserting a finger and thumb, he produced the gem for their inspection.

“It is an incomparable sapphire,” he said--“in a fine state always one of the most precious of precious stones. This example may be pronounced, in bulk and depth of colour, no less than superlative.”

As he spoke, his man entered the room.

“What is it, David?” he exclaimed.

“A lady to see you, sir.”

“What name, man? Why don’t you show her in?”

“Hearing you had visitors, sir, she begged if you would come to her instead.”

He proffered a card.

“It is Mrs Barclay Rivers herself,” said Gilead, turning gleefully to his guests. “I had half-expected her. Excuse me a moment.”

As he left the room, Miss Halifax, with a heart-felt sigh, turned to the secretary.

“Damn!” said that young gentleman laconically.

“I’m convinced she’s young and beautiful and romantic,” murmured the amanuensis unhappily. “Did you notice how shyly he referred to their confidences? A designing creature! Visitors, indeed! I’ve a presentiment we’re going to have our poor little noses put out of joint, Herbert.”

“Hush!” he whispered.

Voices were audible in the passage, and the next moment Gilead laughingly re-entered the room, ushering in his visitor. Miss Halifax rose with a frigid demeanour and a cold feeling at her heart--and encountered the figure of a buxom red-faced woman of sixty, waddling in like a jovial duck.

“Well, I’m blessed!” said Mrs Barclay Rivers, “if this ain’t like a scene out of Dickens, and the conspirators all met together in old Joe’s rag shop! What a pretty frock, my dear!”

Miss Halifax, with a delicious laugh, ran to take the hand offered.