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Page 116
"How on earth did you do that?"
"Ah!" said Ashe. "I further discovered that you were in
communication with an individual named Jones."
"Good Lord! How?"
Ashe smiled quietly.
"Yesterday I had a talk with this man Jones, who is staying in
Market Blandings. Why is he staying in Market Blandings? Because
he had a reason for keeping in touch with you; because you were
about to transfer to his care something you could get possession
of, but which only he could dispose of--the scarab."
The Honorable Freddie was beyond speech. He made no comment on
this statement. Ashe continued:
"I interviewed this man Jones. I said to him: 'I am in the
Honorable Frederick Threepwood's confidence. I know everything.
Have you any instructions for me?' He replied: 'What do you
know?' I answered: 'I know that the Honorable Frederick
Threepwood has something he wishes to hand to you, but which he
has been unable to hand to you owing to having had an accident
and being confined to his room.' He then told me to tell you to
let him have the scarab by messenger."
Freddie pulled himself together with an effort. He was in sore
straits, but he saw one last chance. His researches in detective
fiction had given him the knowledge that detectives occasionally
relaxed their austerity when dealing with a deserving case. Even
Gridley Quayle could sometimes be softened by a hard-luck story.
Freddie could recall half a dozen times when a detected criminal
had been spared by him because he had done it all from the best
motives. He determined to throw himself on Ashe's mercy.
"I say, you know," he said ingratiatingly, "I think it's bally
marvelous the way you've deduced everything, and so on."
"Well?"
"But I believe you would chuck it if you heard my side of the
case."
"I know your side of the case. You think you are being
blackmailed by a Miss Valentine for some letters you once wrote
her. You are not. Miss Valentine has destroyed the letters. She
told the man Jones so when he went to see her in London. He kept
your five hundred pounds and is trying to get another thousand
out of you under false pretenses."
"What? You can't be right."
"I am always right."
"You must be mistaken."
"I am never mistaken."
"But how do you know?"
"I have my sources of information."
"She isn't going to sue me for breach of promise?"
"She never had any intention of doing so."
The Honorable Freddie sank back on the pillows.
"Good egg!" he said with fervor. He beamed happily. "This," he
observed, "is a bit of all right."
For a space relief held him dumb. Then another aspect of the
matter struck him, and he sat up again with a jerk.
"I say, you don't mean to say that that rotter Jones was such a
rotter as to do a rotten thing like that?"
"I do."
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