"Yes, but I'll tell you a funny thing," said the Sergeant. "I've been swotting flies all day, but the whole time little Abraham was with me I never saw a fly settle on him, not once."
"Oh!" said Hannasyde again. "Like that, is he?"
"Yes," replied the Sergeant. "He is. What's more, Super, though you and I may not see eye to eye about Psychology, I know when a man's got the wind up. Little Abraham was having quite a job to keep his feet down on the ground. But I'm bound to say he did it. He answered all my questions before I'd even had time to ask them, too. Gave me a word-picture of his state of mind when he read about the late Ernest's death that was a masterpiece. First you could have knocked him down with a feather; then he thought, why, it must have happened not half-an-hour after he had left the late Ernest. After that he hoped he wouldn't get mixed up in it, and from there it was only a matter of seconds before he remembered handing the late Ernest's butler his card; and, on top of that, having Ernest address him in a loud and angry voice. Finally, it struck him like a thunder-clap that the late Ernest had shown him out by the side gate, so that no other person had witnessed his departure. Having assembled all these facts, he perceived that he was in a very compromising situation, and the only thing to be done was to come straight round to the kind police, whom he was brought up to look upon as his best friends."
Hannasyde was frowning. "It's almost too plausible. What did you do?"
"Gave him a piece of toffee, and sent him home to his mother," answered the Sergeant promptly.
Hannasyde, who knew his Sergeant, apparently approved of this somewhat unorthodox conduct, for he said: "Yes, about the best thing you could do. He'll keep. Now, what about this Charlie Carpenter you spoke of over the telephone?"
The Sergeant abandoned flippancy for the moment. "A packet!" he said. "That's where we come on the second unexpected feature of this case. As a matter of fact, I thought we were going to draw a blank on those fingerprints. But this is what we've got." He picked up a folder from the desk as he spoke, and handed it to his superior. It contained a portrait of a young man, two sets of photographed finger-prints, and a brief, unsentimental record of the latter career of one Charlie Carpenter, aged twenty-nine years, measuring five feet nine inches, weighing eleven stone six pounds, having light-brown hair, grey eyes, and no distinguishing birth-marks.
Hannasyde's brows went up as he read, for the record was one of petty rogueries, culminating in a sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment for false pretences. "This is certainly unexpected," he said.
"Doesn't fit at all, does he?" agreed the Sergeant. "That's what I thought."
Hannasyde was studying the portrait. "Flashy-looking fellow. Hair probably artificially waved. All right, Sergeant: I can see you're bursting with news. Let's have it.