They passed the “Widow Gardiner’s hog-lot” and came into a pleasant country road, which, turning, brought them to a shabby little cottage, embowered in trees.  Through the foliage, farther on, they caught the amber gleam of a languid river; and around their feet, as they entered the yard, scores of pigeons fluttered.

“Carriers!” ejaculated Mr. Birnes, as if startled.

With a strange feeling of elation the detective led the way up the steps to the veranda and knocked.  There was no answer.  He glanced at the chief significantly, and tried the door.  It was locked.

“Try the back door,” directed Chief Arkwright tersely.  “If that’s locked we’ll go in anyway.”

They passed around the house to the rear, and Mr. Birnes laid one hand upon the door-knob.  He turned it and the door swung inward.  Again he glanced at Chief Arkwright.  The chief nodded, and led the way into the house.  They stood in a kitchen, clean as to floors and tables, but now in the utmost disorder.  They spent only a moment here, then passed into the narrow hall, along this to a door that stood open, and then—­then Chief Arkwright paused, staring downward, and respectfully lifted his hat.

“Always the same,” he remarked enigmatically.

Mr. Birnes thrust himself forward and through the door.  On the floor, with white face turned upward, and fixed, staring eyes, lay an old man.  His venerable gray hair, long and unkempt, fell back from a brow of noble proportions, the wide, high brow of the student; and a great, snow-white beard rippled down over his breast.  Save for the glassiness of the eyes the face was placid in death, even as it must have been in life.

Mutely Mr. Birnes examined the body.  A blow in the back of the head—­that was all.  Then he glanced around the room inquiringly.  Everything was in order, except—­except here lay an overturned cigar-box.  He picked it up; two uncut diamonds were on the floor beneath it.  The rough, inert pebbles silently attested the obvious manner of death which simultaneously forced itself upon the three men—­the cowardly blow of an assassin, a dying struggle, perhaps, for the contents of the box, and this—­the end!

From outside came sharply in the silence the rattle of wheels on the gravel of the road, and a vehicle stopped in front of the door.

“Sh-h-h-h!” warned the chief.

Some one came along the walk, up the steps and rapped briskly on the door; the detectives waited motionless, silent The knob rattled under impatient fingers, then the footsteps passed along the veranda quickly, and were lost, as if some one had stepped off at the end intending to come to the back door, which was open.  A moment later they heard steps in the kitchen, then in the narrow hall approaching, and the doorway of the room where they stood framed the figure of a man.  It was Mr. Czenki.

“There’s your man, Chief,” remarked Mr. Birnes quietly.