Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/231

Rh "What do you think will be the best course for us to pursue now?"

"I have been wondering myself. I think, as there is nothing to be learned from this house, the better plan would be for you two gentlemen to go back to Mr. Wetherell, while I return to the detective office and see if anything has been discovered by the men there. As soon as I have found out I will join you at Potts Point. What do you think?"

I agreed that it would be the best course; so, taking the Marquis by the arms (for he was still too weak to walk alone), we left the house and were about to step into the street when I stopped, and asking them to wait for me ran back into the room again. In the corner, just as it had been thrown down, lay the rope with which Beckenham had been bound and the pad which had been fitted over his mouth. I picked both up and carried them into the verandah.

"Come here, Mr. Inspector," I cried. "I thought I should learn something from this. Take a look at this rope and this pad and tell me what you make of them."

He took each up in turn and looked them over and over. But he only shook his head.

" I don't see anything to guide us here," he said as he laid them down again.

"Don't you?" I cried. "Why, they tell me more than I have learnt from anything else I've seen. Look at the two ends of this." (Here I took up the rope and showed it to him.) "They're seized!"

I looked triumphantly at him, but he only stared at me in surprise, and said, "What do you mean by 'seized'?"

"Why, I mean that the ends are bound up in this