It is not to be supposed that the great Whiffle-Way, in all its comprehensive perfection, sprang fully armed from Mr. Bredon’s brain when Mr. Armstrong uttered the words, Family Appeal. All that then happened was a mental association with the phrase Family Hotel, coupled with a faint consciousness of inner illumination. He replied, humbly, “Yes, I see; I’ll try to work out something,” gathered up some sheets of paper on which Mr. Armstrong had scribbled a few illegible notes and a thing that looked like a hedgehog, and made his way out. He had taken six steps down the passage when the idiotic slogan: “If that’s what you want, you can Whiffle for it,” took possession of his brain; two steps further on, this repellent sentence had recast itself as: “All you Want by Whiffling,” and on the threshold of his own room, the first practical possibility of Whiffledom struck him like a sledge-hammer. Fired with excitement, he hurled himself at his desk, snatched a scribbling-block, and had written the word “WHIFFLE” in capitals an inch high, when Miss Rossiter arrived with the message that Mr. Parker urgently requested Mr. Bredon to ring him up on the Whitehall number. Lord Peter Wimsey was so intimately in the skin of Mr. Death Bredon that he said: “Damn!” loudly and heartily.

Nevertheless, he obeyed the call, presented himself with leave of absence on urgent private business, and went down to Scotland Yard, where he surveyed the clothes and effects of the man in the dress suit.

“No doubt we shall end by having to circularize the laundries,” said Parker. “Perhaps a photograph in some of the London and provincial papers would be as well. I loathe newspapers, but they do advertise one’s requirements, and some of these laundry-marks may come from outside London…”

Wimsey looked at him.

“Advertisement, my dear Charles, may be desirable in the case of laundries, but for people like ourselves it does not exist. A gentleman whose clothes are so well cut, and who yet deprives his tailor of the credit for them is, like ourselves, not of the advertising sort. This, I see, is his top-hat, mysteriously uninjured.”

“It had rolled beyond the train, on to the farther line.”

“Quite. Here again the maker’s golden imprint has been removed. How absurd, Charles! One does not-at least, you and I and this gentleman do not-consider the brand to be the guarantee of quality. For us, the quality guarantees the brand. There are two hatters in London who could have made this hat, and you have doubtless already observed that the crown is markedly dolichocephalic, while the curve of the brim is also characteristic. It is a thought behind the present fashion; yet the article is undoubtedly of recent manufacture. Send one of your sleuths to each of these two establishments and ask for the customer with the elongated head who has a fancy for this type of brim. Do not waste your time on laundry-marks, which are, at best, tedious and, at worst, deceptive.”

“Thanks,” said Parker. “I thought you might be able to put your finger either on the hatter or the tailor.”

The first hatter they visited proved to be the right man. He directed their researches to the flat of a Mr. Horace Mountjoy, who lived in Kensington. They armed themselves with a search-warrant and visited the flat.

Mr. Mountjoy, they ascertained from the commissionaire, was a bachelor of quiet habits, except that he was frequently out rather late at night. He lived alone, and was waited upon and valeted by the staff belonging to the block of flats.

The commissionaire came on duty at 9 o’clock. There was no night porter. Between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. the outer door was locked and could be opened by the tenants with their own keys, without disturbing him in his basement flat. He had seen Mr. Mountjoy go out the previous evening at about 7.45, in evening dress. He had not seen him return. Withers, the valet, would probably be able to say whether Mr. Mountjoy had been in that night.

Withers was able to say positively that he had not. Nobody had entered Mr. Mountjoy’s flat but himself, and the chambermaid who did the rooms. The bed had not been slept in. That was nothing unusual with Mr. Mountjoy. He was frequently out all night, though he generally returned to breakfast at 9.30.

Parker displayed his official card, and they went upstairs to a flat on the third floor. Withers was about to open the door with his pass-key, which, as he explained, he was accustomed to use in the mornings, to avoid disturbing the tenants, but Parker stopped him and produced the two keys which had been taken from the corpse. One of them fitted the lock and established, without much doubt, that they had come to the right place.

Everything in the flat was in perfect order. There was a desk in the sitting-room, containing a few bills and some note-paper, but its drawers were all unlocked and it appeared to hold no secrets. Nor was there anything remarkable about the bedroom or the small dining-room. In the bathroom was a little cupboard containing the usual toilet articles and household medicines. Parker made a rapid inventory of these, pausing for a few minutes over a packet labelled “Bicarbonate of Soda,” but touch and taste soon assured him that this contained exactly what it purported to contain. The only thing that could be considered in the slightest degree out of the ordinary in the whole establishment was the presence (also in the bathroom cupboard) of several packets of cigarette papers.

“Did Mr. Mountjoy roll his own cigarettes?”

“I never saw him do so,” replied Withers. “He smoked Turkish Abdullas as a rule.”

Parker nodded and impounded the cigarette-papers. A further search disclosed no loose tobacco. A number of boxes of cigars and cigarettes were retrieved from the dining-room sideboard. They looked innocent and a few, which Parker promptly slit open, proved to contain excellent tobacco and nothing else. Parker shook his head.

“You’ll have to go through everything very carefully, Lumley.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And letters by the first post?”

“There were none.”

“Any visitors today?”

“No, sir. Not unless you count the man from the post-office.”

“Oh? What did he want?”

“Nothing,” replied Withers, “except to bring the new telephone directory.” He indicated the two clean volumes which lay upon the sitting-room desk.

“Oh!” said Parker. This did not sound promising. “Did he come into the room?”

“No, sir. He knocked at the door when Mrs. Trabbs and I were both here. Mrs. Trabbs was sweeping, sir, and I was brushing Mr. Mountjoy’s lounge suit. I took the books in, sir, and handed him out the old ones.”

“I see. All right. And beyond sweeping and brushing and so on, you disturbed nothing?”

“No, sir.”

“Anything in the waste-paper basket?”

“I could not say, sir. Mrs. Trabbs would know.”

Mrs. Trabbs, produced, said there had been nothing in the waste-paper basket except a wine-merchant’s circular. Mr. Mountjoy wrote very little and did not receive many letters.

Satisfied that there had been no interference with the flat since the occupant had left the night before, Parker turned his attention to the wardrobe and chest of drawers, where he found various garments, all properly marked with the names of the tailor or shirt-maker responsible for them. He noticed that all were by first-class artists in their own line. Another silk hat, similar to the one now resting at Scotland Yard, but with sweat-band and crown undisfigured, was found in a hat-box; there were also several felt hats and a bowler, all by first-class makers.

“Mr. Mountjoy was a rich man?”

“He appeared to be in very easy circumstances, sir. He did himself well; the best of everything. Especially during the last year or so.”