LITMIR.BIZ

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personality on the world of finance in no uncertain way. With the cuttings on his meteoric business career went all the trimmings of his social climb. His yacht, his racing-stable, his country houses, villa on the Mediterranean, all the rest. Plenty about the Blue Lake Sapphire too. While I was working my way through it, scribbling notes of any stuff that looked particularly interesting for Mr. Brett, Bill ambled off and returned with another file, which he slapped down beside the other.

      He watched my face as I stared at It, a bit puzzled. The name on the file was LYDIA DELMAR. Which didn’t mean anything to me at all. Except made me think of a name for some ice cream or something.

      “Getting your names a bit mixed, Bill, aren’t you?” I said.

      He shook his head, his smile broader.

      “You want the inside stuff as well, you said.”

      I tapped the Delmar file. “But where does she—?”

      “He was nuts about her,” Bill said.

      Lydia Delmar’s press-clippings were mostly photographs. Photos of an extremely delectable-looking blonde. The earlier captions underneath told you she was the well-known mannequin, and I began to remember I’d seen her in the smart fashion magazines. Then came some later photos of her smiling dreamily at a nice-looking dark young man with a sprinkle of confetti around his ears. The captions included his name, Raymond Ward. Bill Foster jabbed at him with his pipe-stem.

      “He used to be Tisdall’s private secretary.”

      “Like that was it?” I said.

      “Like that,” Bill said. “Chucked the big man, she did, for the other one.”

      “What’s happened to them now?”

      “Lydia’s in New York working for some advertising firm, I believe. The boy’s still around London, trying to scrape enough money to go out and join her.”

      “Not much of a marriage, that.”

      “Oh, I expect they write each other. Often think marriages would work out better if the husband lived in one country and the wife in another.”

      “You have the dearest ideas,” I told him.

      He grinned back at me. Then he said reflectively. “It knocked Tisdall all of a doodah. Some say he’s never forgiven either of ’em. Hardly credit it, eh? Fact. All that dough, power couldn’t buy him that little doll.” He jabbed Lydia Delmar’s photo with his pipe. “’Course, Tisdall kicked out young Ward on the spot. Real vicious, he was. S’pose it hit his pride and all that.”

      “Quite the dramatic stuff,” I said, taking a cigarette from my case. Bill held a match to it, then applied it to his pipe. He puffed away thoughtfully for a moment, until the match he’d forgotten to blow out burned his fingers. Idly he turned some of the cuttings from the big file and picked out a photo of Tisdall.

      “Talking of dramatics,” he said slowly, “I always have the feeling one of these days I’ll see that dial over a caption of quite a different kind.”

      I looked at him curiously. “How different?”

      “I dunno,” he muttered. “Something—unpleasant.”

      I studied the face again with fresh interest. It wasn’t a nice face, I thought, and remembered that was the reaction I had when he’d come into the office that morning. It was puffy and the eyes were small and lidless. But staring at it now, it didn’t give me any reason to guess just how soon Bill Foster’s prophetic words would be coming home like birds of ill-omen to roost.

      When I got back, Mr. Brett was in, looking very much the same as when I’d left him, with his feet still up on the desk. Just as if he’d never been out of the office. Automatically I expected to see the whisky-bottle at his elbow—he often stayed behind and took his lunch from that. But it was nowhere around. Instead, there were several newspapers draped over everything, which weren’t there before, so I knew he had in fact been out. I looked in again presently with the Farringdon Tisdall dope, and he was staring at the anonymous message through a magnifying glass. Apparently he was comparing it with something in one of the newspapers. Then I noticed ail the papers were financial sheets. The Financial Market, Daily Finance, and so on.

      After a while it seemed to sink in I was in the same room with him, and he turned and gave me a grin. “How’s it feel to watch the Great Sleuth at work?” He said, with that sarcastic jeer which was his own particular brand. “Give you a thrill?”

      “From where I’m standing, you look more like someone playing the Stock Market, in a crazy sort of way,” I said. “Here’s the stuff on Farringdon Tisdall.”

      And I went back to my office to get on with the job of dealing with the mailing, the filing—the routine stuff which Mr. Brett apparently fondly imagines is done by a troupe of tender-hearted pixies after I’ve locked up for the day.

      After a while the speaking-machine on my desk crackled, and his voice came at me like water sizzling over hot coals. “Leave your lipstick and compact for now, Gorgeous, you’re wanted.”

      “Yes, Mr. Brett,” I said back into the box even more icily if possible than ever, and pulling a face at the darned thing. It would happen his jibe in the dark would catch me coincidentally just at the moment I’d paused to fix my make-up. I made an irritable grab for my notebook and went on in. He was by the window moodily contemplating the street. On a chair beside him was one of the newspapers, the warning letter, and the magnifying glass. He turned to me and passed on the newspaper, which was of a pinky shade.

      “Take a look at that.”

      I saw at once part of a column he’d marked off with pencil. I puzzled at it, doing my best to appear as if it was making sense. Seemingly it was an extract from some company report, jam full of technical terms and references whose meaning was clear to me as mud. If it had been written in Aztec, it couldn’t have told me more.

      “Very interesting,” I said.

      “If you find that improving to the mind,” he grinned, “this should kill you.” And handed me the letter. “Take a peek at it, through this,” giving me the glass.

      And then, bingo! I got what he was getting at.

      The letters forming the warning message had obviously been cut out from an issue of the newspaper I’d just been looking at. Comparison proved that the type was identical with that of the pencilled column. Under the magnifying glass, the pink edge I’d only half-noticed earlier on round each letter so neatly gummed to the writing paper was the exact shade of the newsheet.

      Mr. Brett saw by my face that the penny had dropped. “Came a great light,” he murmured sardonically:

      “And what does it add up to?” I said.

      He lit a cigarette and idly watched a puff of smoke curl ceilingwards, before he said slowly:

      “It adds up to the possibility that the sender of the note warning Farringdon Tisdall his pet ruby was in danger of being pinched was himself a reader of the financial press. From which hypothesis—” Mr. Brett cleared his larynx and his manner became almost expansive, sure sign he was beginning to enjoy listening to the sound of his own voice, “—could evolve a logical sequence of questions. For example, what persons most interested in the ruby are also interested followers of newspapers devoted solely to finance? Having answered that one, you could by a narrowing-down process proceed inevitably to put your finger on the party who sent the letter.”

      “And when will you be taking that rabbit out of the hat?” I said. He regarded me with that derisive grin of his through another cloud of cigarette smoke.

      “I’ll do nay utmost, Dream Girl,” he said, “to show you the trick tonight.”

      * * * * * * *

      Farringdon Tisdall’s house in Highgate was a whacking great white mansion place standing in its own grounds screened from the road by trees, with a wide drive curving up to

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