“You miss the dog and the stick?” smiled Carrados. “No; it’s a fact.”
“What an awful infliction for you, Max. You were always such an impulsive, reckless sort of fellow—never quiet. You must miss such a fearful lot.”
“Has anyone else recognized you?” asked Carrados quietly.
“Ah, that was the voice, you said,” replied Carlyle.
“Yes; but other people heard the voice as well. Only I had no blundering, self-confident eyes to be hoodwinked.”
“That’s a rum way of putting it,” said Carlyle. “Are your ears never hoodwinked, may I ask?”
“Not now. Nor my fingers. Nor any of my other senses that have to look out for themselves.”
“Well, well,” murmured Mr Carlyle, cut short in his sympathetic emotions. “I’m glad you take it so well. Of course, if you find it an advantage to be blind, old man——” He stopped and reddened. “I beg your pardon,” he concluded stiffly.
“Not an advantage perhaps,” replied the other thoughtfully. “Still it has compensations that one might not think of. A new world to explore, new experiences, new powers awakening; strange new perceptions; life in the fourth dimension. But why do you beg my pardon, Louis?”
“I am an ex-solicitor, struck off in connexion with the falsifying of a trust account, Mr Carrados,” replied Carlyle, rising.
“Sit down, Louis,” said Carrados suavely. His face, even his incredibly living eyes, beamed placid good-nature. “The chair on which you will sit, the roof above you, all the comfortable surroundings to which you have so amiably alluded, are the direct result of falsifying a trust account. But do I call you ‘Mr Carlyle’ in consequence? Certainly not, Louis.”
“I did not falsify the account,” cried Carlyle hotly. He sat down, however, and added more quietly: “But why do I tell you all this? I have never spoken of it before.”
“Blindness invites confidence,” replied Carrados. “We are out of the running—human rivalry ceases to exist. Besides, why shouldn’t you? In my case the account was falsified.”
“Of course that’s all bunkum, Max,” commented Carlyle. “Still, I appreciate your motive.”
“Practically everything I possess was left to me by an American cousin, on the condition that I took the name of Carrados. He made his fortune by an ingenious conspiracy of doctoring the crop reports and unloading favourably in consequence. And I need hardly remind you that the receiver is equally guilty with the thief.”
“But twice as safe. I know something of that, Max…. Have you any idea what my business is?”
“You shall tell me,” replied Carrados.
“I run a private inquiry agency. When I lost my profession I had to do something for a living. This occurred. I dropped my name, changed my appearance and opened an office. I knew the legal side down to the ground and I got a retired Scotland Yard man to organize the outside work.”
“Excellent!” cried Carrados. “Do you unearth many murders?”
“No,” admitted Mr Carlyle; “our business lies mostly on the conventional lines among divorce and defalcation.”
“That’s a pity,” remarked Carrados. “Do you know, Louis, I always had a secret ambition to be a detective myself. I have even thought lately that I might still be able to do something at it if the chance came my way. That makes you smile?”
“Well, certainly, the idea——”
“Yes, the idea of a blind detective—the blind tracking the alert——”
“Of course, as you say, certain faculties are no doubt quickened,” Mr Carlyle hastened to add considerately, “but, seriously, with the exception of an artist, I don’t suppose there is any man who is more utterly dependent on his eyes.”
Whatever opinion Carrados might have held privately, his genial exterior did not betray a shadow of dissent. For a full minute he continued to smoke as though he derived an actual visual enjoyment from the blue sprays that travelled and dispersed across the room. He had already placed before his visitor a box containing cigars of a brand which that gentleman keenly appreciated but generally regarded as unattainable, and the matter-of-fact ease and certainty with which the blind man had brought the box and put it before him had sent a questioning flicker through Carlyle’s mind.
“You used to be rather fond of art yourself, Louis,” he remarked presently. “Give me your opinion of my latest purchase—the bronze lion on the cabinet there.” Then, as Carlyle’s gaze went about the room, he added quickly: “No, not that cabinet—the one on your left.”
Carlyle shot a sharp glance at his host as he got up, but Carrados’s expression was merely benignly complacent. Then he strolled across to the figure.
“Very nice,” he admitted. “Late Flemish, isn’t it?”
“No. It is a copy of Vidal’s ‘Roaring lion.’”
“Vidal?”
“A French artist.” The voice became indescribably flat. “He, also, had the misfortune to be blind, by the way.”
“You old humbug, Max!” shrieked Carlyle, “you’ve been thinking that out for the last five minutes.” Then the unfortunate man bit his lip and turned his back towards his host.
“Do you remember how we used to pile it up on that obtuse ass Sanders and then roast him?” asked Carrados, ignoring the half-smothered exclamation with which the other man had recalled himself.
“Yes,” replied Carlyle quietly. “This is very good,” he continued, addressing himself to the bronze again. “How ever did he do it?”
“With his hands.”
“Naturally. But, I mean, how did he study his model?”
“Also with his hands. He called it ‘seeing near.’”
“Even with a lion—handled it?”
“In such cases he required the services of a keeper, who brought the animal to bay while Vidal exercised his own particular gifts…. You don’t feel inclined to put me on the track of a mystery, Louis?”
Unable to regard this request as anything but one of old Max’s unquenchable pleasantries, Mr Carlyle was on the point of making a suitable reply when a sudden thought caused him to smile knowingly. Up to that point he had, indeed, completely forgotten the object of his visit. Now that he remembered the doubtful Dionysius and Mr Baxter’s recommendation he immediately assumed that some mistake had been made. Either Max was not the Wynn Carrados he had been seeking or else the dealer had been misinformed; for although his host was wonderfully expert in the face of his misfortune, it was inconceivable that he could decide the genuineness of a coin without seeing it. The opportunity seemed a good one of getting even with Carrados by taking him at his word.
“Yes,” he accordingly replied, with crisp deliberation, as he recrossed the room; “yes, I will, Max. Here is the clue to what seems to be a rather remarkable fraud.” He put the tetradrachm into his host’s hand. “What do you make of it?”
For a few seconds Carrados handled the piece with the delicate manipulation of his finger-tips while Carlyle looked on with a self-appreciative grin. Then with equal gravity the blind man weighed the coin in the balance of his hand. Finally he touched it with his tongue.
“Well?” demanded the other.
“Of course I have not much to go on, and if I was more fully in your confidence I might come to another conclusion——”
“Yes,