Chapter FIFTEEN

Mr. Collop was standing dramatically in the midst of that large apartment, a squat tower of triumphant modesty and unassailable success.

"I asked His Honour, Mr. Dee Boe Hun, to bring you all in," he said, as though they were a school, "so's ye might see how things like this are _done_. It's the end of what's been troubling you all; what's been biting you! Oh! I know your distress," he added kindly, fixing Galton with his eye first, then the Professor. "But first and to start with, I 'ave a confession to make, I 'ave. Ye thought me His Majesty's representative in Bogotar, just returned." He smiled genially. "Ar! ye thought that, and nat'rally enough. Well, now, I'm free to tell ye the truth. An' in _my_ trade," he went on, crossing his arms boldly, "that's not too often, Gawd helping us! Now 'oo am I? I'm from the Yard. In plain English, I'm what they call a detective. Now don't start!" he added, releasing his left hand and holding it up. Nor had any of them started, least of all Aunt Amelia, who had not clearly heard the last words. "There's no 'arm done, there's none o' you to blame. There's none o' you suspect. You'll none o' you have the darbies on," he added, with kindly jocularity. "Oo's done it?"

"I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure ..." began the Professor with ready tongue.

"You'll excuse _me_, Professor," said Mr. Collop with dignity, "but I must continue. Ah! 'oo's done it, I arsk? The question we 'ave all on us been asking. And now"--with mysterious dignity--"ye shall see. If any of ye is for wrapping up before ye go out of doors say so. It's only a little turn."

No one was for wrapping up before going out of doors. They were getting intrigued.

"Foller me," said Mr. Collop after the fashion of the great leaders of mankind. He threw open the window towards the avenue and heavily straddled himself out. The Professor's long legs followed; young Lord Galton, a good deal bored, with his hands in his pockets, took it at a stride; Marjorie's short skirts negotiated it; McTaggart tried to jump it, hit his head on the sash, rubbed it, and then more sensibly walked across. As for Vic, she put a bony hand upon the sill and vaulted lightly over. Poor Aunt Amelia stood looking after them in vain, like the women of Ithaca when first the king sailed away to the gathering of the chiefs and of whom it is written:

"This is the hall where all the women spinning
Sang of the Kings who sailed away to Troy."

She could not vault; she could not even stride. Lastly, the Home Secretary himself hooked a lean shank over and stood with the shivering group. Outside they all came on to the swept gravel of the avenue, with its row of bare trees and its border of broad snow on either side. Mr. Collop with a gesture still more majestic than any he had yet assumed, pointed with iron hand and arm at the light snow which covered the grass upon the right. There, sure enough, was the mark of a bird's claw. And side by side with it, the other triple mark of the bird's other claw.

"A bird 'ops," pontificated Mr. Collop, significantly. "'E don't run--'cept ostriches and such like. 'E 'ops. Foller me!"

His left hand slightly clenched, with his right he pointed down continuously to the border of the snow, whence, at short intervals, those two triple marks appeared and reappeared.

"Mark you," said Mr. Collop, facing the group--the now half-frozen group. "I said, a bird 'ops. What 'opped 'ere? A bird!"

They approached the fatal tree.

"And 'ere," said Mr. Collop in the tone of a guide conducting a party of tourists, "our marks are lost. And for why? 'E takes the air! Whither will 'e take the air? Put ye'self in his place. Whither would a bird take the air from hence, seeing what fatal burden 'e bore in 'is beak?" He half waved, half pointed, with his left hand at the hollow-branched stump just higher than their heads and some ten feet away. "Foller me," he said again.

They followed him--but not to the point of going on the snow, which Mr. Collop did with great courage and resolution. He stood on tiptoe by the trunk and stretched his clenched left hand upward, groped with it hidden to the wrist in the hollow of the rotten branch, lifted it out again high between them and the frosty January sky. There held between the thumb and forefinger, unmistakable, recovered, was the Emerald.

"What did I tell yer?" he waved triumphantly in that keen air, "Brains, gentlemen ... ladies _and_ gentlemen, I mean.... Brains! Induction." And he calmly slipped the gem into his pocket.

Had they been in a warm room they would have applauded: it was so exactly like the best tricks. But they were cold. They huddled back. It was only twenty or thirty yards; they would be in the warmth again in a moment.

I know very well that there ought to have been a shock of surprise. A cheer. Excitement. What you will. But, Lord! it was so cold!

One by one they clambered, straddled, strode, vaulted, crawled and shambled over the low window ledge and back into the room. Mr. Collop came last, and slammed the window down behind him: and Aunt Amelia welcomed them as might the old nurse of Ulysses when he returned at last from so much wandering. As the warm air revived them they began to feel him, very rightly, a hero.

"Now," said he, "shall I show ye all 'ow these things are done? Step by step, unbeknownst to others? Ah! It's worth knowing! Look 'ere," and he began, their interest rising as their blood began to move again: "You mayn't see it, but I see it, here on this parky floor." He stooped down and tapped it with his finger. "Little marks. Little marks."

There were no little marks--but no matter. He had done his best to suggest them. The Professor greatly helped them by his folly.

"Yes! I see! Oh! Yes! Most interesting! I see them now!"

"And where does they lead? Why, to the winder. Then what did I say to myself? I ses, 'A bird! A daw!' And mark you, gentlemen--ladies and gentlemen, I mean--I didn't come to that blindly, either. For you'll pardon me, but I know what you'd all said."

The guests looked--or at least, most of them did--at their host. But he was modestly regarding the carpet.

"I know as 'ow you 'ad, all or most of you, felt suspected like and might well enough think you could each o' ye be certain which o' ye it was. And ye were wrong," he continued, wagging his head solemnly. "Orl wrong! It was but an innocent bird. Or a thievish bird. Any'ow--a bird. That's what it was--a bird. When I 'eard of your confusion from our good host here"--and again Mr. de Bohun looked anyhow--"I says to meself, 'They're innocent, they are!' That was my first clue. Orl innocent," he emphasized cheerily, nodding in a nice heartening way to McTaggart, the Professor and young Galton, the last of whom said, almost audibly, to Vic, "The stinker!" and to whom Vic whispered back, "Well, he found it, anyhow!"

"Orl innocent," went on Mr. Collop. "Orl as white as the driven snow. And 'oo set things right and proved you so? Why, yours truly.... First, arter I'd thought 'ard orl night, I looks by the first white o' morning at the parky--and sure enough I sees them faint prints on the wax, like: an' them near the winder. What are the birds as thieves? Why, daws! Now, ladies and gentlemen, daws 'as claws; talons, ye may call 'em, of a 'ighly partic'lar kind. It's our business in my trade to know orl we can--and I can tell a daw's claws from any other claws, or paws ... any other in the wide world.

"So wot does I do? In this same early morning, afore any one of ye were up--at any rate, afore any of yer had showed themselves, I was out trailing. Sure enough, there I found where the bird had gone, for I marked his prints on the snow. When I found where the bird 'ad 'opped to, I follered to where he'd sat on the air. When I found where he'd taken the air, what does I do? Did I say to myself, ''E 'as flown far, far away; give up the search, William Collop? You are proven right, but the hem'rald will not be seen again by mortal eye.' Did I despair thus? No, not I! I thinks to myself, knowing the habits of birds better than most--we 'ave to know such things in our trade--he 'as put it near by, so's to be able to come and gloat on it. They love to go and gloat on what they 'ave taken, do daws. Then I noted that rotten stump o' branch just convenient to the bird where he took the air, and I says 'Yureeker,' which is, being interpreted, 'Found.' But I didn't touch that bole; no, I trusted to my induction. I was as sure it was there as though I'd seen it, and I wanted to lead up to it step by step so's ye might be witness to the discovery. Weren't I right?

"That's why I asked you all to be brought 'ere. That's why I took you all out and made the thing clear to you before your own eyes; William Collop said he'd find the hem'rald where his induction told him it would be. And there he found it!"

His face was irradiated with no common glory.

"An' now," he said, at the end of this harangue, and plunging his hand into his coat pocket to fish out the gem, "now I restore it--'Ullo!" he frowned; the groping of his hand in his pocket looked like some small animal fighting in a bag. "'Ullo!" he repeated and still he groped. "'Ullo--'ullo! Wot's this!" His face grew black. He eyed successively with some disfavour the Professor, McTaggart and Galton. "You were all close together," he said suspiciously, "as we came through that winder!" Then suddenly, "Ah! 'ere it is! Smother me if it 'adn't gone through a hole in the lining. That's my missus, that is. She's that careless." And turning the receptacle inside out he gingerly picked the jewel from the tear between the sateen, with threads still attached to its setting.

"There now! Wot was I saying? I restore it to its rightful owner!" And with a bow, unlike that of Lord Chesterfield's dancing master, he handed it to Marjorie.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Collop, thank you!" said Marjorie. "Thank you a thousand times. I don't know how to thank you!"

"It's really very remarkable, Mr. Collop, very remarkable indeed. Very remarkable," said the Home Secretary. He went so far as to wring his subordinate by the hand. "We are infinitely obliged to you."

The guilty three were less enthusiastic; but they murmured as though they would be polite--though Galton's murmur, overheard by Vic, was, "I believe he pinched it himself!" And Vic answered in a second whisper, "Fat-head!"--a chosen epithet delivered with such real contempt in the slit of a dark eye as made the poor horse-puller wince.

Then Aunt Amelia bleated:

"I don't quite understand. _Who_ does Mr. Collop say stole the emerald?"

"Amelia! Amelia!" protested her brother severely.

"But I want to know," began poor Aunt Amelia pathetically. "I didn't hear properly. I want to know who it is has been found to have stolen the ..."

Her brother interrupted desperately.

"I'm so sorry," he cried, turning to the others, but directing his remarks particularly and courteously to McTaggart, as the stranger. "You must excuse my sister. She does not always hear."

"I must thank you myself, personally and warmly, Mr. Collop," said Marjorie, the ancient courtesy of the Bohuns strong in her veins. "We'd all got lousy with worry, and you've hit the cocoanut."

"Thank you, Miss, I'm sure," said Mr. Collop, bowing again in the manner aforesaid.

And they all drew apart to various rooms, but Victoria Mosel, lingering for a moment, whispered in Mr. Collop's ear, "I saw it in your hand _before_ the tree!" The detective started. "For Gawd's sake!" he pleaded under his breath.

"All right, I don't give people away." She nodded reassuringly and slipped away.... Hence for so many years the devoted service of Mr. Collop whenever Victoria cared to summon him.

The Home Secretary had detained McTaggart, catching his arm as he turned to go, and had said, "Wait a moment, Mr. McTaggart, wait a moment. Mr. Collop, I think it is only just to say in your presence that I had repeated to this young gentleman--not my suspicions--they were not my suspicions--but what I had been told were the suspicions of others."

Mr. Collop bowed again in the aforesaid manner.

"Mr. McTaggart," the Home Secretary continued, "I'm going to ask Mr. Collop to let us have a few words together alone. Mr. Collop, where may I see you in five minutes?"

"Where you will," said Mr. Collop with chivalry. "I'll be looking at the old paintings in the 'all. The ancestors, I've seen them in the ball room already," he added, nor was there any irony in his innocent soul.

When he had shut the door behind him, the poor old Home Secretary put an almost fatherly hand on McTaggart's shoulder.

"My dear young sir," he said, "what can I do? How can I apologise? It is not enough to ask you to forgive me. May I ask to communicate with you when we reach town?"

The mind of McTaggart was not alert, but even he foresaw the possibilities. Politicians have not very great power nowadays save in patronage; that they still do retain; of public money there are some odd millions every year at the disposal of the politicians. It is only fair to say that most of them are content with moderate pickings for themselves and their connections.

Therefore did McTaggart answer with a natural prescience of coming advantage. "It is very good of you, sir. May I call at the Home Office?"

"Yes, yes. Shall we say Thursday at noon?" De Bohun marked it in a little pocket book and then joined Collop in the hall, as McTaggart walked off.

"Mr. Collop," he said, "won't you come back and talk to me a moment in private?"

They returned together. And exactly the same scene was rehearsed, except that he dared not put a hand on the shoulder of such a being as Collop.

"Mr. Collop," he said, "you know that the Department of which I am the head is proud of you."

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Collop sedately. "Thank you very much." He then added: "I have only done my duty...." But I am glad to say that he did not add "as a man is bound to do," for if he had done that de Bohun, whose nerves were already on edge, might have had a fit. However, he meant something of that kind. So let it be credited to him.

"Mr. Collop," went on the Home Secretary, "when I go to the office to-morrow, Monday, I hope you will allow me to make a particular point of seeing you. Men of your kind must not be wasted."

"Thank you, sir," said Collop again, in a tone which showed a full sense of his worth. "I shall always be at your orders."

And so, you will say, the great thing ended.

Wrong again.

De Bohun had sunk back into his chair, now at last at rest. There were still inexplicable things drifting through his mind. He had vague memories of Galton accusing his cousin the Professor, and the Professor accusing McTaggart, and McTaggart spotting Collop; of himself accusing McTaggart; of the boy Ethelbert accusing Galton. He even had confused recollections of their actually swearing to things they had seen which they could not have seen. But he sighed with deep content at the solution of it all, and he thought of his daughter's relief. He decided to worry himself with contradictions no more. The emerald had been found; a bird had taken it, and no one was to blame. That man Collop had genius.... Marjorie would be in a better temper now. He shut his tired eyes. He was on the point of falling into a short sleep after so much strain when there was a knock at the door, and he saw as he opened his eyes again, not too pleased at being wakened, the august, the discreet, the considerable figure of George Whaley.