“Oh, that is vely easy.  Okosaki is my family name.  You English people say it quicker than Numaguwa Jiro, so I give it.  But when I got mallied I used my light name.  Japanese law does not pelmit the change of names now.  My ploper name is Numagawa Jiro”—­which he pronounced “Jilo.”

“You told the detective at Ipswich that the device on the handle represented the setting sun.  How did you know the sun was setting, and not rising?”

It was a haphazard shot.  The description was Hume’s, not Winter’s.

Again the Japanese paused before answering.

“It was shown by the way in which the gold was used.  Japanese altists have symbols for ideas.  That is one.”

“Thank you.  I imagined you recognised the device, and could speak off-hand in the matter.  By the way, do you use a type-writer?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Jiro.  “My husband is clever at all that sort of thing, and when he found the people could not read his writing he bought a machine.”

“I have sold it again,” interfered Jiro, after a hasty glance round the room, “and I am going to buy another.”

Mrs. Jiro rose to stir the fire unnecessarily.

“They are most useful,” said Brett.  “Which make do you prefer?”

“They are all vely much alike,” answered the Japanese, “but I am going to buy a Yost or a Hammond.”

“I am very much obliged to you for receiving me at this late hour,” said the barrister, rising, “but before I go allow me to compliment you on your remarkable knowledge of English.  I am sure you are indebted to your good lady for your idiomatic command of the language.”

“I studied it for yeals in Japan—­” began Jiro, but in vain, for his very much better half resented the word “idiomatic.”

“I don’t know about that,” she snorted.  “He talked a lot of nonsense when we were married, but I’ve made him drop it, and he is teaching me Japanese.”

“His task is a pleasant one.  It is the tongue of poetry and love.”

Again there was a pause.  A minute later Brett was standing in the street trying to determine how best to act.

He was fully persuaded that Jiro had, in the first place, identified the crest as belonging to one of the many Samurai clans.  But the motto was new to him, and its discovery had revealed the particular family which claimed its use.

Why did he refuse to impart his knowledge?  There must be plenty of Japanese in London who would give this information readily.

Again, why did he lie about the type-writer, and endeavour to mislead him as to the make of the machine he used?

To-morrow, for a certainty, Jiro would dispose of the Remington which he now possessed.  Well, he should meet with a ready purchaser, if a letter from Brett to every agency in London would expedite matters.

He did not credit Jiro with the death of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, nor even with complicity in the crime.  The Japanese had acted as the unwitting tool of a stronger personality, and the little man’s brain was even at this moment considering fresh aspects of the affair not previously within his ken.