"Gone?"
"Gone to blazes! Spanish Fours are so low that you'd get pain in your back if you stooped to pick them up."
T. B. nodded.
"I'll use your telephone," he said, and stooped over the desk. He called for a number, and after an interval—
"Yes—that you, Maitland? Go to 375 St. John Street, and take into custody Count Ivan Poltavo on a charge of murder. Take with you fifty men and surround the place. Detain every caller, and every person you find in the house."
He hung up the receiver. "It is a bluff, as my gay American friend says," he remarked to the editor, "because, of course, I have no real evidence against him. But I want a chance to ransack that studio of his, anyway.
"Now, my friend," he said in French, "what shall we do with you?"
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders listlessly.
"What does it matter?" he said. "They will have me—it is only a matter of hours."
"I take a brighter view," said T. B. cheerily; "you shall walk with us to Scotland Yard and there you shall be taken care of."