The inspector laughed.

"We must forgive you your 'even,' Mr. Holmes," said he "it's as workmanlike a job as I can remember."

A couple of days later my friend tossed across to me a copy of the biweekly North Surrey Observer. Under a series of flaming headlines, which began with "The Haven Horror" and ended with "Brilliant Police Investigation," there was a packed column of print which gave the first consecutive account of the affair. The concluding paragraph is typical of the whole. It ran thus:

The remarkable acumen by which Inspector MacKinnon

deduced from the smell of paint that some other smell, that

of gas, for example, might be concealed; the bold deduction

that the strong-room might also be the death-chamber, and

the subsequent inquiry which led to the discovery of the

bodies in a disused well, cleverly concealed by a dog kennel,

should live in the history of crime as a standing

example of the intelligence of our professional detectives.

"Well, well, MacKinnon is a good fellow," said Holmes with a tolerant smile. "You can file it in our archives, Watson. Some day the true story may be told."