The church bells were chiming eleven o'clock when a car drew up before a gloomy corner shop, bearing the dingy sign of the pawnbroker's calling, and Beale and McNorton alighted.

It was a main street and was almost deserted. Beale looked up at the windows. They were dark. He knocked at the side-entrance of the shop, and presently the two men were joined by a policeman.

"Nobody lives here, sir," explained the officer, when McNorton had made himself known. "Old Rosenblaum runs the business, and lives at Highgate."

He flashed his lamp upon the door and tried it, but it did not yield. A nightfarer who had been in the shade on the opposite side of the street came across and volunteered information.

He had seen another car drive up and a gentleman had alighted. He had opened the door with a key and gone in. There was nothing suspicious about him. He was "quite a gentleman, and was in evening-dress." The constable thought it was one of the partners of Rosenblaum in convivial and resplendent garb. He had been in the house ten minutes then had come out again, locking the door behind him, and had driven off just before Beale's car had arrived.

It was not until half an hour later that an agitated little man brought by the police from Highgate admitted the two men.

There was no need to make a long search. The moment the light was switched on in the shop Beale made his discovery. On the broad counter lay a sheet of paper and a little heap of silver coins. He swept the money aside and read:

"For the redemption of one silver hunter, 10s. 6d."

It was signed in the characteristic handwriting that Beale knew so well "Van Heerden, M.D."

The two men looked at one another.

"What do you make of that?" asked McNorton.

Beale carried the paper to the light and examined it, and McNorton went on:

"He's a pretty cool fellow. I suppose he had the money and the message all ready for our benefit."

Beale shook his head.

"On the contrary," he said, "this was done on the spur of the moment. A piece of bravado which occurred to him when he had the watch. Look at this paper. You can imagine him searching his pocket for a piece of waste paper and taking the first that came to his hand. It is written in ink with the pawnbroker's own pen. The inkwell is open," he lifted up the pen, "the nib is still wet," he said.

McNorton took the paper from his hands.

It was a bill from a corn-chandler's at Horsham, the type of bill that was sent in days of war economy which folded over and constituted its own envelope. It was addressed to "J. B. Harden, Esq." ("That was the _alias_ he used when he took the wine vaults at Paddington," explained McNorton) and had been posted about a week before. Attached to the bottom of the account, which was for L3 10s., was a little slip calling attention to the fact that "this account had probably been overlooked."

Beale's finger traced the item for which the bill was rendered, and McNorton uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"Curious, isn't it?" said Beale, as he folded the paper and put it away in his pocket, "how these very clever men always make some trifling error which brings them to justice. I don't know how many great schemes I have seen brought to nothing through some such act of folly as this, some piece of theatrical bravado which benefited the criminal nothing at all."

"Good gracious," said McNorton wonderingly, "............