"Certainly appearances are very much against him," remarked Kenly cautiously, "but I never trust to appearances myself. I have seen too many cases, where perfectly innocent persons have been on the most intimate terms with scoundrels, to allow that one fact to weigh with me. If it was only a question of the burglary, I should expect Captain Marven to be the next victim of the gang, and it is only the fact that it seems impossible for the contents of the despatches to have become known to the Horas without Marven's assistance which leads me to suspect him with the rest of the crowd."
The Permanent Secretary puffed meditatively at his cigar.
"Things look very black against Marven," he said. "Very black indeed," he repeated, after a lengthy pause; then he asked, "Who are these Horas?" Kenly shook his head.
"I should like to know their history myself," he answered. "All I have heard hitherto is that the elder man has occupied a first-class flat in Westminster for the past ten years at a rent of three hundred and fifty pounds a year, and passes as a very retired gentleman indeed. He spends only about six months of the year in London, and they say he has estates in Italy. That may or may not be the case, but, anyhow, he calls himself the Commandatore, which I'm told is an Italian title given him by the King of Italy for something or other he's done over there. The young one was at Oxbridge and made quite a name amongst his set, and lived at home till a few weeks ago, when he took some chambers in the Albany. Then there's a girl named Myra, who passes as the old man's daughter, though there's reason to think that she's only an adopted child."
"What are you proposing to do?" asked the Permanent Secretary, after another pause.
Inspector Kenly coughed. "That depends——" he remarked, and paused. "That depends on circumstances. You see, Sir Everard, my hand may be forced before I shall have obtained all the evidence I want. That communication which has been made to Mr. Flurscheim may lead at any moment to the younger Hora's arrest, and then good-bye to the hope of obtaining any more evidence. What I was going to suggest was that you should allow me to continue to investigate your affair. It will leave me more free to look after things than if I have to turn in a report to headquarters. I'm so afraid," he added in a burst of confidence, "that they might put some man on to the job that would bungle it. I've got an idea as to where the Greuze is hidden, but I know very well that at the first hint of anything going wrong it would disappear, or be destroyed."
"Then you think that the same people who brought off the Flurscheim burglary are responsible for the despatch leakage?" asked the Permanent Secretary.
"Certain of it," declared Inspector Kenly.
"But if you continue to work on my business, isn't what you fear likely to come to pass? Will not another man be put on to the picture robbery? Flurscheim will hardly keep silence."
"I'll see after that," answered Kenly. "From what I know of Mr. Flurscheim he won't let the grass grow under his feet. He is probably on the way to town now."