Forbes positively wilted under that extraordinary attack.  His white face grew wan, and his eyes dilated with surprise and terror.  The detective’s words seemed to have the effect of a paralytic shock.  Thenceforth he was under dog in the fight.

“How do you know,” he gasped, “that I received an ivory skull this morning?  Have you been to my house?  Did my daughter tell you?”

Furneaux chuckled.

“You’re ready to listen, eh?  Well, I don’t mind telling you that I have not stirred out of this flat since seven o’clock this morning, and I question if your letters were delivered in Fortescue Square at that hour.”

“I give in,” said Forbes curtly.  “Need we remain here?  The smell of that cursed joss stick oppresses me.”

Then Theydon found his tongue.

“If Mr. Furneaux cares to abandon his vigil, my flat is entirely at your disposal,” he said.

“My vigil, as you accurately describe it, has ended for the time being,” said Furneaux, apparently mollified by the millionaire’s surrender.  “I was sure that if I remained here long enough I would clear away some of the fog attached to a case which promises to be one of the most remarkable I have ever investigated.  Come, gentlemen, let us be amiable to one another.  I’m sorry if I lost my temper just now, but I regard myself as being the only detective in existence who uses other sections of his brain than those governed by statutes made and provided, and it riles me when men of superior intelligence like yourselves treat me as though my mission in life was to direct the traffic and keep a sharp eye on mischievous juveniles....  Mr. Theydon, can that soldier-servant of yours make coffee?”

“His wife can,” said Theydon.

“Will you be good enough, then, to set her to work?  Thus far, since the sun rose, I have stayed the pangs of hunger with an apple and a glass of water.”

By this time, Theydon had thoroughly revised his first estimate of the diminutive detective.  Indeed, he was beginning to look on him as a quite noteworthy person, a man whose mental equipment it was most unwise to assess at any lower valuation than the somewhat exalted one which Furneaux himself had set forth with such refreshing candor.

As for Forbes, the millionaire seemed to have sunk into a species of stupor since Furneaux spoke of the ivory skull.  He uttered no word until the three were seated in Theydon’s room, and his expression was so woebegone that it stirred even the mercurial Jerseyite to pity.

“I imagine that a cup of coffee will do you also a world of good,” he said.  Then, whirling round on Theydon, he stuck a question into him as if each word was a stiletto.

“Where do you get your coffee?”

“At the grocer’s,” was the surprised answer.

“Is that all you know about it?”

“Yes.”