dezvous for him and dozens of his clients or victims. I'm looking for papers—drugs—anything of that kind.”
Kotman Dass nodded.
“Please excuse me then if I point out to you thatt you have exhausted most of the possibilities for hiding places of this room—except for floor, which Dragour would not use because of slow and cumbrous business of lifting carpets and soa forth.”
“Oh, he wouldn't use the floor to hide things under, wouldn't he? Well, what else would he use?” jeered Salaman.
“It seems to my mind thatt he would desire hiding places thatt are veree easilee accessible and can be used quicklee and neatlee,” said Kotman Dass mildly.
“Well, come in and show me some, damn you.”
“Oah, noa, please excuse,” ejaculated Dass, his eyes wide on an ominous stain on the carpet.
“But to save time and to accelerate departure from this spot please play me little melody upon piano—just a little scale would suffice perhaps.”
Salaman stared at him, hesitated on the brink of an angry outburst, then thought better of it and went over to a handsome upright piano and, raising the lid, ran a finger tip up the line of ivory keys.
“There's your miserable melody,” he said dryly.
Kotman Dass smiled nervously.
“Oah, yess, veree miserable,” he agreed. “Thee piano is seriously out of tune—no tuner has been allowed to work att thatt piano for considerable period of time. Yet it is good, valuable piano.”
His eyes brightened.
“I venture to advance proposal, Mister Chayne, thatt you take out one of thee keys for me to examine.”
Salaman did so, without comment.
For a moment Kotman Dass turned the beautifully fashioned bit of ivory about in his podgy fingers, then pressed his thumb, with a pushing movement, against the bottom of the apparently solid oblong at the end of the key. The base slid back, revealing a neat oblong cavity about an inch and a half long and an inch wide.
Inside the cavity lay a small bottle full of tiny white tablets.
“Hah!” went Salaman, his eye running greedily over the line of keys.
“And now, iff you please, I will go home,” said Kotman Dass simply. “I am not feeling well in my liver and there is stain on thee carpet thatt makes my nerves jump, and moreover I have just solved chess problem in my mind.”
“Oh, all right, clear off,” snapped Salaman ungraciously, shut the door, and turned to ransack the piano keys.
II.
Perhaps half an hour later Mr. Salaman Chayne, his usually scrupulously flat and neat pockets bulging a little, stepped jauntily into the big, sunny apartment, half library, half smoking room which he and Kotman Dass used mostly.
“Those piano keys were full of things, he said. “Drugs, mainly, but other things as well. Among 'em, these. It required six keys to hold them.”
He poured on to the table before the abstracted eyes of his partner a handful of pinkly flashing rubies—huge things, much too huge to be devoid of flaws. But the flaws which would have prejudiced a dealer in jewels solely as jewels against them, mattered little for, as Salaman Chayne proceeded to point out, the value of the gems lay more in the exquisite and microscopic carving into which their surfaces had been wrought.
“D'ye 'know what you're looking at, Dass?”
That remarkable coward nodded.
“Oah, yess, dear mister. These are thee famous Barford Heirlooms, rubies which were said to have been stolen from thee Lord Barford few weeks ago. Thatt was occasion upon which thee jockey Ferank Sover was arrested and charged with theft of these gems.”
Salaman Chayne nodded.
“Yes, Dass. If I had half your memory, Dass, and you had a quarter of my courage we should be an astonishing pair. Let me see—what happened? Sover, the jockey, was discharged, wasn't he?”
Kotman Dass nodded, keeping his finger tip carefully marking his place on a pageful of nightmareish algebraical symbols, hooks, Xs, Zs, zigzags, jazz twists, small circles, decimal dots, lines, curves and minute figures which he appeared to have been reading with keen delight.
“Oah, yess, jockey was discharged by magisterates for reasons of lack of evidence and excellent, first-class testimony to the
