The Man in the Brown Suit

“Dear Harry,
I think I see a chance of establishing your innocence beyond any possible
doubt. Please follow my instructions minutely. Go to Agrasato’s curioshop. Ask to
see something ‘out of the ordinary,’ ‘for a special occasion.’ The man will then
ask you to ‘come into the back room.’ Go with him. You will find a messenger who
will bring you to me. Do exactly as he tells you. Be sure and bring the diamonds
with you. Not a word to anyone.”
Sir Eustace stopped.
“I leave the fancy touches to your own imagination,” he remarked. “But be careful to
make no mistakes.”
“ ‘Yours for ever and ever, Anne,’ will be sufficient,” I remarked.
I wrote in the words. Sir Eustace stretched out his hand for the letter and read it through.
“That seems all right. Now the address.”
I gave it him. It was that of a small shop which received letters and telegrams for a
consideration.
He struck the bell upon the table with his hand. Chichester-Pettigrew, 
alias
Minks,
answered the summons.
“This letter is to go immediately—the usual route.”
“Very well, Colonel.”
He looked at the name on the envelope. Sir Eustace was watching him keenly.
“A friend of yours, I think?”
“Of mine?” The man seemed startled.
“You had a prolonged conversation with him in Johannesburg yesterday.”
“A man came up and questioned me about your movements and those of Colonel Race. I
gave him misleading information.”
“Excellent, my dear fellow, excellent,” said Sir Eustace genially. “My mistake.”
I chanced to look at Chichester-Pettigrew as he left the room. He was white to the lips, as
though in deadly terror. No sooner was he outside, than Sir Eustace picked up a speaking
tube that rested by his elbow, and spoke down it. “That you, Schwart? Watch Minks. He’s
not to leave the house without orders.”
He put the speaking tube down again, and frowned, slightly tapping the table with his

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hand.
“May I ask you a few questions, Sir Eustace,” I said, after a minute or two of silence.
“Certainly. What excellent nerves you have, Anne! You are capable of taking an
intelligent interest in things when most girls would be sniffling and wringing their hands.”
“Why did you take Harry as your secretary instead of giving him up to the police?”
“I wanted those cursed diamonds. Nadina, the little devil, was playing off your Harry
against me. Unless I gave her the price she wanted, she threatened to sell them back to him.
That was another mistake I made—I thought she’d have them with her that day. But she was
too clever for that. Carton, her husband, was dead too—I’d no clue whatsoever as to where
the diamonds were hidden. Then I managed to get a copy of a wireless message sent to
Nadina by someone on board the 
Kilmorden
—either Carton or Rayburn, I didn’t know
which. It was a duplicate of that piece of paper you picked up. ‘Seventeen one twenty two,’
it ran. I took it to be an appointment with Rayburn, and when he was so desperate to get
aboard the 
Kilmorden
I was convinced that I was right. So I pretended to swallow his
statements, and let him come. I kept a pretty sharp watch upon him and hoped that I should
learn more. Then I found Minks trying to play a lone hand, and interfering with me. I soon
stopped that. He came to heel all right. It was annoying not getting Cabin 17, and it worried
me not being able to place you. Were you the innocent young girl you seemed, or were you
not? When Rayburn set out to keep the appointment that night, Minks was told off to
intercept him. Minks muffed it, of course.”
“But why did the wireless message say ‘seventeen’ instead of ‘seventy-one?’ ”
“I’ve thought that out. Carton must have given that wireless operator his own
memorandum to copy off on to a form, and he never read the copy through. The operator
made the same mistake we all did, and read it as 17.1.22 instead of 1.71.22. The thing I
don’t know is how Minks got on to Cabin 17. It must have been sheer instinct.”
“And the dispatch to General Smuts? Who tampered with that?”
“My dear Anne, you don’t suppose I was going to have a lot of my plans given away,
without making an effort to save them? With an escaped murderer as a secretary, I had no
hesitation whatever in substituting blanks. Nobody would think of suspecting poor old
Pedler.”
“What about Colonel Race?”
“Yes, that was a nasty jar. When Pagett told me he was a Secret Service fellow, I had an
unpleasant feeling down the spine. I remembered that he’d been nosing around Nadina in
Paris during the War—and I had a horrible suspicion that he was out after 
me!
I don’t like
the way he’s stuck to me ever since. He’s one of those strong, silent men who have always
got something up their sleeve.”

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A whistle sounded. Sir Eustace picked up the tube, listened for a minute or two, then
answered:
“Very well, I’ll see him now.”
“Business,” he remarked. “Miss Anne, let me show you your room.”
He ushered me into a small shabby apartment, a Kafir boy brought up my small suitcase,
and Sir Eustace, urging me to ask for anything I wanted, withdrew, the picture of a courteous
host. A can of hot water was on the washstand, and I proceeded to unpack a few
necessaries. Something hard and unfamiliar in my spongebag puzzled me greatly. I untied the
string and looked inside.
To my utter amazement I drew out a small pearl-handled revolver. It hadn’t been there
when I started from Kimberley. I examined the thing gingerly. It appeared to be loaded.
I handled it with a comfortable feeling. It was a useful thing to have in a house such as
this. But modern clothes are quite unsuited to the carrying of firearms. In the end I pushed it
gingerly into the top of my stocking. It made a terrible bulge, and I expected every minute
that it would go off and shoot me in the leg, but it really seemed the only place.

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