and out of Mr. Fullaway’s rooms.  Once, Mr. Fullaway being out, and I having nothing to do, I was cleaning up some photographic apparatus which I had there.  This man Ebers came in with some clothes of Mr. Fullaway’s.  Seeing what I was doing, he got talking to me about photography, saying that he himself was an amateur.  He recommended to me certain materials and things of that sort which he said he could get from a friend of his, a chemist, who was an enthusiastic photographer and manufactured chemicals and things used in photography.  I gave him some money to get me a supply of things, and he brought various packets and parcels to me two or three days later.  Each packet bore the name of Otto Schmall, and an address in a street which runs off Mile End Road.

“Now, when the private inquiry agent made his reports to Mr. Rayner and myself about Van Koon, and told us where he had been tracked to more than once, I, of course, remembered the name of Schmall, and Mr. Rayner and I began to put certain facts together.  They were these: 

“First.—­Ebers had easy access to Mr. Fullaway’s room at all hours, and was often in them when both Mr. Fullaway and I were out.  Mr. Fullaway is notoriously careless in leaving papers and documents, letters and telegrams lying around.  Ebers had abundant opportunities of reading lots of documents relating to (1) the Pinkie Pell pearls, and (2) the proposed Nastirsevitch deal.

“Second.—­Ebers was a friend of Sehmall.  Schmall was evidently a man of great cleverness in chemistry.

“Third.—­All the circumstances of Mr. James Allerdyke’s death, and of Lisette Beaurepaire’s death, pointed to unusually skillful poisoning.  Who was better able to engineer that than a clever chemist?

“Fourth.—­The jewels belonging to the Princess Nastirsevitch had undoubtedly fallen into Van Koon’s hands.  Van Koon was a friend of Schmall.  So also, evidently, was Merrifield.  Now, Merrifield, as Delkin’s secretary, knew of the proposed deal.

“Obviously, then, Schmall, Van Koon, and Merrifield were in league—­whether Ebers was also in league, or was a catspaw, we did not trouble to decide.  But there was another fact which seemed to have some bearing, though it is one which I have never yet worked out—­perhaps some of you know something of it.  It was this:  Just before he went to Russia, Mr. James Allerdyke, being in town, gave me a photograph of himself which Mr. Marshall Allerdyke had recently taken.  I kept that photo lying on my desk at Mr. Fullaway’s for some time.  One day I missed it.  It is such an unusual thing for me to misplace anything that I turned over every paper on my desk in searching for it.  It was not to be found.  Four days later I found it, exactly where it ought to have been.  Now, you can draw your own conclusions from that—­mine are that Ebers stole it, so that he could reproduce it in order to give his reproduction to some person who wanted to identify James Allerdyke at sight.