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94 “Change my duties? What do you mean?”

“I warn you that the new ones will be less pleasant than the old! In other words, I must ask you to tear yourself away from Miss Val Beverley for an hour in the morning, and take advantage of Mr. Camber’s invitation to call upon him.”

“Frankly, I doubt if he would acknowledge me.”

“Nevertheless, you have a better excuse than I. In the circumstances it is most important that we should get in touch with this man.”

“Very well,” I said, ruefully. “I will do my best. But you don’t seriously think, Harley, that the danger comes from there?”

Paul Harley took his dinner jacket from the chair upon which the man had laid it out, and turned to me.

“My dear Knox,” he said, “you may remember that I spoke, recently, of retiring from this profession?”

“You did.”

“My retirement will not be voluntary, Knox. I shall be kicked out as an incompetent ass; for, respecting the connection, if any, between the narrative of Colonel Menendez, the bat wing nailed to the door of the house, and Mr. Colin Camber, I have not the foggiest notion. In this, at last, I have triumphed over Auguste Dupin. Auguste Dupin never confessed defeat.”