and a tree in the foreground.  Sometimes the tree would be in the background.  Then the loch would be in the foreground.  Sky and water were intensely blue in all.  The name of the collection was “Original oil-paintings done by hand.”  Dust lay thick upon everything, as if carefully shovelled on; and the proprietor looked as if he slept in his shop-window at night without taking his clothes off.  He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking-cap, and a luxuriant black moustache.  He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain.

“Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Cantercot,” he said, rubbing his hands, half from cold, half from usage; “what have you brought me?”

“Nothing,” said Denzil, “but if you will lend me a sovereign I’ll do you a stunner.”

The operatic villain shook his locks, his eyes full of pawky cunning.  “If you did it after that, it would be a stunner.”

What the operatic villain did with these plots, and who bought them, Cantercot never knew nor cared to know.  Brains are cheap to-day, and Denzil was glad enough to find a customer.

“Surely you’ve known me long enough to trust me,” he cried.

“Trust is dead,” said the operatic villain, puffing away.

“So is Queen Anne,” cried the irritated poet.  His eyes took a dangerous hunted look.  Money he must have.  But the operatic villain was inflexible.  No plot, no supper.

Poor Denzil went out flaming.  He knew not where to turn.  Temporarily he turned on his heel again and stared despairingly at the shop-window.  Again he read the legend

  “PLOTS FOR SALE.”

He stared so long at this that it lost its meaning.  When the sense of the words suddenly flashed upon him again, they bore a new significance.  He went in meekly, and borrowed fourpence of the operatic villain.  Then he took the ’bus for Scotland Yard.  There was a not ill-looking servant girl in the ’bus.  The rhythm of the vehicle shaped itself into rhymes in his brain.  He forgot all about his situation and his object.  He had never really written an epic—­except “Paradise Lost”—­but he composed lyrics about wine and women and often wept to think how miserable he was.  But nobody ever bought anything of him, except articles on bacon-curing or attacks on vestrymen.  He was a strange, wild creature, and the wench felt quite pretty under his ardent gaze.  It almost hypnotised her, though, and she looked down at her new French kid boots to escape it.

At Scotland Yard Denzil asked for Edward Wimp.  Edward Wimp was not on view.  Like kings and editors, detectives are difficult of approach—­unless you are a criminal, when you cannot see anything of them at all.  Denzil knew of Edward Wimp, principally because of Grodman’s contempt for his successor.  Wimp was a man of taste and culture.  Grodman’s interests were entirely concentrated on the problems