He looked round for his cigar case, and not finding it immediately made confusion of the pile of papers which covered his table.
"I think, Sir Everard, you will find your cigar case in your coat pocket," observed the detective blandly.
The Permanent Secretary smiled as he thrust his hand into the breast pocket of his discarded coat.
"The heat always makes me irritable," he apologised. "No man ought to work when the thermometer reaches the eighties." He selected a cigar. "By the way," he remarked, "by what process of reasoning did you arrive at the deduction that my cigar case was in my pocket?"
"I saw the corner of it sticking out," remarked the detective equably.
"H—m," said the Permanent Secretary, laughing, "the proper use of the eyes may on occasion be more valuable than any amount of deduction."
He lit his cigar and stretched himself lazily in his chair.
"Now fire away, Kenly. I can see that you have something to tell me about those stolen despatches."
Without unnecessary beating about the bush Kenly began the result of his investigations. The narration did not take long, for, though he had already spent a month on the investigation, the facts he had discovered could be described in a very few words. But few as those facts were they were sufficiently startling to make the Permanent Secretary forget the heat.
"By Jove!" he remarked, when Kenly had finished. "And I would have pledged my life on Captain Marven's absolute honour. Yet, from what you have told me, he appears to be hand-in-glove with a gang of thieves, one of them living in his own house and likely at any moment to become engaged to his daughter."