“Come,” called Ashton-Kirk.

A short man with remarkable breadth of shoulder and depth of chest entered; he was smooth shaven and salient of jaw and wore the air of one who was not easily balked in anything that he undertook.

“How are you, Burgess?” said the investigator.

“Good-evening,” returned Burgess.  He advanced and laid some neatly folded sheets at the elbow of his employer.  “Fuller was busy and I thought I’d bring these in myself.  It’s my report on Hume.”

“Ah, thank you.”

Ashton-Kirk took up the sheets and began running his eye through them.  “As you get deeper into this record, did Hume keep his promise?”

Burgess smiled.

“As to possibilities, do you mean?  Why, yes.  Indeed, I rather think he exceeded them.”  The man lit the cigar which the investigator handed him and drew at it appreciatively.  “I went it alone on the first day; but after that I took O’Neill and Purvis on.  Between us, we managed to get at something pretty definite.”

“Has Fuller finished with Morris?”

“He is typing his report at this moment.  It will be ready in a half hour, I should think.”

“Please tell him to bring it in as soon as it is finished.”

Burgess nodded and went out.  Ashton-Kirk continued to dip into the report here and there.

“Among three of them,” said Pendleton, “they should have sifted the man’s life and adventures pretty well.”

As Ashton-Kirk continued to scan the pages, a peculiar expression slowly came into his eyes.

“They seem to have done so, indeed.  And rather cleverly, too, I think.  Would you care to hear the report?”

“By all means,” eagerly.

The sheets were shifted into their proper order once more.  Then Ashton-Kirk read: 

  “’A Further Investigation into the Affairs of David Purtell Hume.

“’No record was to be had of Hume, beyond his settlement in the city in 1899.  People in the same line of business were questioned closely; and those who knew anything of him at all clung to the idea that he was an American who had lived for many years abroad.

“’So we had another look at the old passenger lists of the steamships; but this time we went further back.  We knew that the simple ruse of a fictitious name would cover Hume completely; but it seemed the only thing to do, and we set at it systematically.  In the records of the steamer Baltic of the Netherlands Steamship Company for the year 1897, we came upon the name of “D.  Purtell.”  Without much hope of learning anything definite after such a lapse of time, I inquired after this passenger.

“’Luck was with us in the shape of an old clerk with a long memory.  He faintly recalled something of the man, and after some talk got out still another book.  And there it was!  D. Purtell, so it seemed, had been involved in an attempt to smuggle a quantity of diamonds.