Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/69

 ure of a man tinkering with the mechanism underneath.

"Can I be of any assistance?" I said, addressing him. "I understand a little of this make—"

The owner of the car swung around, and the remainder of my sentence was never finished. My eyes stared with pleasure and surprise at the sight of his face.

"Colwin Grey, by all that's wonderful!" I exclaimed. "Whatever are you doing in this part of the country?"

He smiled as we shook hands.

There was not much wrong with the car, when I came to examine it, and I soon had it in running order again. I worked determinedly, and when I had finished I wiped my hands with a piece of cotton waste. From the roadside Grey expressed his thanks.

"And where are you going, Haldham?" he asked. His shrewd glance took in my travel-stained attire and the shabby suitcase in my hand. I felt myself flushing a little beneath his eye.

"I am looking for a night's lodging, for one thing," I rather lately said.

"Well, then, you had better come along and dine with me. I am stopping at Penzance for the night. It's strange running across you in this fashion, you know, because one of the things which brought me to Cornwall was to look for you."

"To look for me?" I echoed in astonishment.

"Yes; there has been rather a lucky turn of affairs in your late father's estate. It appears that one of his foreign speculations has turned out well, and there is a residue coming to you. Not a fortune, by any means, but a few thousands at least, and a few thousands are always acceptable at any time. I was asked to find you, but that proved more difficult than I thought. I traced you to your London lodgings but your landlady could tell me nothing beyond the fact that you had left there to go to Cornwall.

"That was vague; but as it happened I was motoring to the west of England on other business, so I decided to make inquiries as I came along—so far without success. I certainly didn't expect to come across you like this, wandering through Cornish moors with a suitcase in your hand. What have you been doing down here? However, never mind that now. Jump up and drive into Penzance with me."

I hesitated, and he saw it.

"What is the difficulty?" he asked. I looked at him, and made up my mind in a moment.

"Grey," I said by way of answer, "I want badly to talk to you. At the present moment I would value your advice and assistance more than anything else in the world. But in spite of that I cannot come with you now, because I have to be on these moors again before it grows dark."

He gave me a keen glance.

"If that is all," he said, "you can drive yourself back in my car. So you had better come. I thought when I saw your face that you looked like a man with a story to tell. Well, you can tell me as we go along, or defer it until dinner at the hotel—just as you please."

I did so, grateful to the toss of the coin which had turned my footsteps that way. (That half-crown is now a cherished possession of my wife's.) I saw in it a symbol—an augury—of my case; for in all England just then Colwin Grey was the man I would have most wished to see, had I been offered the choice. He was a solicitor when I first knew him in my own legal days, but much more, even then, than that. Since then his name has become familiar to most people in the more sensational and popular rôle of a famous private investigator of crime. I came to know him intimately in the course of the Heredith case, for the Herediths and our family were friends, and his wonderful elucidation of that grim and ghastly tragedy made a lasting impression on my mind. His face was keen and pale as of old, and there was the same look in his wonderful grey eyes: inscrutable, but with something indulgent and compassionate in their depths—the undemanding glance of one to whom so many human foibles