If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general excitement and agitation of the nation.  The war-drum would drown any small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence.  Suppose some one did kill Adrian Fellowes?  He deserved to die, and justice was satisfied, even if the law was marauded.  There were at least four people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse.  There was Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile flower-girl—­and himself.  It was necessary that Mappin, however, should be silenced, and sent about his business.

Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural irritability behind all, said “Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not gone elsewhere with your suspicions?”

The other shook his head in negation.

“Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as an expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes.  Your suspicions may have some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, tact, and knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive clues and, when finding them, making them fit in with fact—­only a man like yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it.  You are not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in causing pain and annoyance beyond calculation.  Just imagine a Scotland Yard detective with such a delicate business to do.  We have no Hamards here, no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of special sense.  Can you not see the average detective blundering about with his ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never traced a motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue?  Well, it is the business of the Law to detect and punish crime.  Let the Law do it in its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to solve.  Why should you complicate things?  The official fellows could never do what you could do, if you were a detective.  They haven’t the brains or initiative or knowledge.  And since you are not a detective, and can’t devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be any problem at all, I would suggest—­I imitate your own rudeness—­that you mind your own business.”

He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes.

At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke made by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended dignity and feebly returned the smile.