Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/171

 along your track and you suddenly find yourself up against a blank wall which you can't climb or a yawning gulf which you can't bridge! What then?"

"Go round 'em!" retorted Nottidge. "Pick up the trail on the other side! Here's my little establishment."

Nottidge House at which Wedgwood glanced with interested curiosity, proved to be a somewhat pretentious modern residence of the villa type, set in a garden much ornamented by statuary and furnished with a miniature lake and a pagoda. The detective felt sure that at any other time Nottidge would have insisted on showing him over his domain before leading him on to the house, but on this occasion he was hurried to the imposing front door, where an elderly, buxom woman stood at the top of the steps, evidently eager to see her employer.

"There's two of 'em now, Mr. Nottidge!" she announced. "The second came just after I'd telephoned to you—not five minutes after. I've put them both in the little breakfast parlour—they're honest-looking men, though the first one seems to be some sort of a foreigner. But of course I've kept an eye on them."

Nottidge beckoning the detective to follow him strode through the hall, and flinging open a door at the end bustled into a small room