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60 somehow to blame for that," confessed Mr Chatton in a troubled voice. "You remember, I told you"

"No, no," protested Mr Carlyle encouragingly. "How could it be your fault?"

"Well, it's very good of you to reassure me," continued the young man, relieved but not convinced. "But I really think I may have introduced a confusing element. I should like Mr Carrados to judge. . . . When I learned from Sir Roland that he intended sending this Virginiola to Gurnard's, knowing that it was a valuable book, I saw the necessity of going over it carefully with another copy—'collating' it is called—to find out whether anything was missing. The British Museum doesn't possess an example, and in any case I could not well spare a day just then to come to London for the purpose. So I wrote to a few dealers, rather, I am afraid, giving them the impression that we wished to buy a copy. In this way I got what I wanted sent up on approval and I was able to go through the two thoroughly. At the moment I argued that my duty to my employer justified the subterfuge, but I don't know, I don't know; I really question whether it was quite legitimate."

"Oh, nonsense," remonstrated Mr Carlyle, to whom the subtleties did not appeal. "Rather a smart way of getting what you wanted in the circumstances, don't you think, Max?"

Carrados paid a willing if equivocal tribute to the wider problem of Mr Chatton's brooding conscientiousness.

"Very ingenious altogether," he admitted.

Mr. Carlyle did not pull his man up in a few weeks; in fact he never reached him at all. For the key to the