"The woman who annexed my motor car, and who murdered Mrs. Caldershaw by sticking a hat-pin into her heart, stole it."
"Whose glass eye was it?"
"Mrs. Caldershaw's."
"Who is she?"
"The dead woman."
Cannington gulped down a cup of tea and requested particulars. "You see I was in such a rage that I heard very little from the messenger," he explained apologetically. "All I gathered was that some woman had been murdered and robbed, and that you were suspected. I hurried along to tell the police that they were idiots, and----"
"Oh, not such idiots," said I, pushing back my chair and lighting a cigarette. "You see I was caught red-handed by Mrs. Giles' husband."
"Oh, sir," put in the greengrocer's wife deprecatingly.
"Begin at the beginning," commanded Cannington, who was still eating with the healthy appetite of a young animal, "and go on to the end. I'm not clever enough to make up a story out of scraps."
Thus adjured I detailed all that had taken place from the time I had left him at the Mess-room door on the previous day. He became so interested that he ceased to eat, and at the conclusion of my narrative jumped up from his chair with an ejaculation. "By Jove," said he, recalling our conversation in the Rippler, "adventures are to the adventurous, aren't they? This real life business beats any of your melodramas."