Tony, who had just seated herself on the table, looked up. “Oh, are you the new detective, Mr. Linckes?” she asked interestedly.

“Autonia!”

“Well, all right, Daddy. You can’t help my knowing. How do you do?”

She extended a small gloved hand to Linckes, who took it, and stammered something that seemed to him inane.

“I hope you’ll solve the mystery,” Tony said. “You don’t look frightfully Sherlock Holmes-y, you know!”

She smiled mischievously. It was then that Linckes’ heart changed hands.

Then he took his leave of them and went out, all thoughts obscured for the moment by the picture of Miss Autonia Caryu sitting on a table with her slim ankles crossed, and a friendly smile on her beautiful red lips.

III.

NEARLY three months slipped by, and found Linckes disgruntled. Caryu had been very kind to him. So, too, had Caryu’s daughter.

He was a little puzzled by Winthrop. He had been drawn to him from the very first, but he was at a loss to understand his moods. One day Sir Charles would be flippant and gay, the next irritable and restless; he was sometimes most inconsequent and absent-minded. Yet with all this nervous temperament he was undoubtedly clever, always charming, and an eminently responsible person. Once Linckes spoke tentatively to Tony about him, and the girl had laughed.

“Oh, Charlie’s an extraordinary man!” she had said. “A perfect darling, but quite mad! They think an awful lot of him at the War House, you know. Under that flippant manner of his there’s heaps and heaps of brain. Everybody loves him, but he’s a dreadful trial!”

“A trial?” had asked Linckes. “Why?”

“Well, he’s so — so moody. And he will forget things. Sometimes he’ll say a thing to me and contradict it within an hour. When I tease him about it, he just laughs and says, ‘Oh, did I? That was just hot air, then.’ It’s a pose, I think. He used not to do it so much.”

Linckes’ eyes narrowed.

“Funny! Doesn’t seem quite to fit in with his reputation, somehow.”

“That’s why I say it’s a pose,” Tony had answered triumphantly. “’Cos really he’s a most capable person. Daddy says he’s got a huge grip on affairs. And—and now this beastly traitor business has cropped up, and if you can’t solve the mystery it means Charlie and Daddy’ll be under a sort of cloud, and it’s—it’s such a shame! I mean, everyone who knows Charlie knows that he’s such a—such a splendid man! Why, look at the things he did during the war! Daddy says he was simply wonderful! Mr. Linckes, please do try and solve the mystery! I’d—I’d like to put the man who did the thing in boiling oil! I would!”

“Of course I’m going to try my hardest to get to the bottom of it all,” Linckes said. He tried to speak carelessly. “I—I suppose you’re awfully fond of Sir Charles?”

At that Tony had opened her eyes wide.

“Well, naturally. He’s like a dear elder brother, and I’ve known him ever since I was a kid.”