The Adventures of Marnocke Burne, Detective

---

HOW HE TRACED THE FIRST EDITION.

---

       Marnocke Burne sat in his rosy smoke-room one evening lazily chewing the cud of deep reflection, and, incidentally, a quid of bogey roll. As he sat there with his slippers on the rich Oriental rug, the gift of a Maharajah, and his feet poised on the carved mantelpiece between two priceless ornaments of Benares ware which he had won in a raffle, none would have recognised in him the super-human detective whose sensational exploits as a tracker of mysterious crime had earned for him the soubriquet of "The Miraculous Marnocke." Suddenly a spark flew out of the brightly blazing fire (it was a cold night in May), and fastened on the rug upon which had once reclined the voluptuous form of the Maharanee. The great Man-Hunter, whose senses were so fine and so highly trained that nothing ever escaped him except his own breath, seized the tiny atom of coal e'er yet it had ceased to glow and examined it minutely under a pocket microscope. "Someone is coming along the street to my rooms," he muttered thoughtfully. "I wonder who it can be at this time of night." Again he carefully examined the tiny spark. "The man is in breathless haste," he continued, "it must be no ordinary errand that brings him." Then with one of these lightning flashes of intuition which had won for him so many triumphs in the criminal arena he exclaimed — "I wonder if the Burns Monument has been raided?" The words had scarcely sprung from his neatly parted lips ere hurrying feet were heard in the street below, and the bell was pulled with a force that nearly tore the handle from its socket. It was in just such moments as this that the iron nerve and silver-plated self-possession of the great detective rose to their transcendental height. "Who's there?" he asked, and his measured, even tones betokened that here was a man ready for any emergency. "It's me," came back the hurried, breathless reply, in such hideous contrast to the studied, deliberate question. Marnocke Burne paused with one hand on the patent double-revolving check lock of the door and the forefinger of the other on the electric switch. "The first clue," he muttered inwardly — "The bad grammar betrays the Town Councillor, and his use of the personal pronoun confirms it. He concludes that everyone knows him. "It's the Bailie!" "Come in, Bailie," he said aloud laconically, and threw open the door at the same time switching on the light.

       The Bailie blinked in the dazzling light of the hall for a minute, and then focussed his optics on the tall, commanding figure of the great detective, as he stood calm and immovable as a statue awaiting the message of his midnight guest.

       "Are you great private detective, Marnocke Burne?" asked the Bailie with unabated excitement.

       "I call myself Marnocke Burne," came the quiet, colourless voice, which fell like cold water upon the other man's heated nerves and cooled them as ice cools the fevered brow. "I am a detective, and men are good enough to call me great. But the term is only comparative after all, and I have never sought after what men call fame. My work absorbs me. But you are coatless and hatless, besides being breathless and excited. Won't you come into the smoke room and have a cup of coffee?"

       "Well," answered the Bailie, "if it's all the same to you, Mr Burne, I would prefer a drop of whisky. I think it would do me more good."

       "As you please," answered the great detective; "I never touch spirits myself after ten o'clock at night." He poured out about half a tumblerful of whisky and handed it to his visitor. "Have I given you too much?" he queried, and a faint sardonic grin relaxed almost imperceptibly the graven immobility of his face. The Bailie took the glass hurriedly from his hand. "Not at all, Mr Burne, not at all," he hastened to assure him; "whisky never gangs tae ma heid." So saying he tossed off half of it at one gulp.

       By an adroit and masterly movement, Marnocke Burne (whom we have already had occasion to refer to as "the great detective") seated himself so that his face remained in shadow; one firm white land rested on the arm of the ebony chair in which he sat, while with the other he toyed with a jewelled dagger, the gift of the Rajah of Dungaree, whose life he had saved by his timely discovery of a plot on the part of seven of His Highness's wives to blow him up. The feet of Marnocke Burne (hereinafter called "The Great Detective") were extended, and the bright light threw up more deeply the blood-red tones of the crimson socks which he always affected. The whole effect and atmosphere of this wonderful man were quite Mephistophelian, and this had its due effect on the pompous civic dignitary who sat absorbing ardent spirits with evident relish.

       The Great Detective at length broke the silence in two. "Your business?" The two words porting of the shadows like sparks from an anvil.

       "Man," said the Bailie with a start, "you have made me that comfortable that I had clean forgotten the awfu' business. Are you aware that Burns Monument was broken into to-night, and that the priceless first edition of the Poet's works has been stolen, forby a gold watch?"

       "If he expected that his news would astonish The Great Detective, he had yet to learn the unsounded depths of Marnocke Burne. "I thought as much," was all he said, as he lit a gold-mounted hookah, the gift of the Caliph of Bagdad, whose stolen jewels he had recovered from a notorious gang of robbers.

       "You thought as much!" exclaimed the bewildered Bailie; "why, the thing's not half an hour discovered. Hoo on earth could you ken onything aboot it?"

       "It matters not; it is sufficient that I know all about it," was the reply vouchsafed by The Great Detective. "I suppose you have come to me to find this precious volume for you?"

       "Man, if ye could dae that the Toon Conncil wid gie ye onnything in reason — provided, of course, that ye didnt chairge over muckle."

       "The volume will be in your hands within twenty-four hours if I live," said The Great Detective calmly. "As for remuneration, I care little about that when the scent of the man-hunt is in my quivering nostrils. In any case, my grandfather knew a man whose father once held Burns' horse at Ayr Cross, and the interesting relation thus established between me and the departed Poet will, no doubt, induce the Government to grant me a Civil List pension when the time comes. Now, I must ask you to leave me, as I have much to do ere the dawn. A little more whisky?"

       "Whitever ye say," complacently agreed the Bailie, and he found standing room in his capacious corporation for another half tumblerful of cold whisky ere he shook hands warmly with The Great Detective and found himself alone on the doorstep.

       Left to himself, Marnocke Burne rapidly made his preparations and sallied forth so cleverly disguised that he scarcely knew himself. His first call was at the Police Office, where in a few minutes he elicited all the facts of the case. He passed out once again into the night, and sat down on a doorstep to weight up his conclusions. "I have it!" he exclaimed aloud, and a half volley of sneezes which shook him to the bone betokened that he had. But it took more than influenza to awe The Great Detective, and he went relentlessly on to his task. Turning rapidly and noiselessly into a suburban road, he paused before the house of a well-known Burns enthusiast and scanned it with an eagle eye. Just at that moment a shaft of moonlight shot between two clouds, and flashed upon a tiny object lying on the gravel path. The steely eye of the Great Detective fastened upon it, and stepping carefully forward on his rubber shoes he picked an infinitesimal piece of broken glass, and examined it with evident satisfaction. "The same," he muttered, "the very same. My intuition has not failed." In a few minutes he had noiselessly entered the library. A few more minutes sufficed to show him that the fender had been shifted a sixteenth of an inch from its former position, and tapping the ornamental tiles he found that four were loose. Carefully he raised them, and there, as he expected, carefully wrapped in brown paper, was the coveted First Edition. It was the work a few more minutes to replace everything as he had found it, and sitting down at the writing table The Great Detective left the following message behind him on the blotter:— "Your sin has found you out. This time you are spared, but see to it that you walk virtuously in future, for the relentless eye of Marnocke Burne (commonly called The Great Detective") will be ever upon you. So beware!"

       Following upon this last great triumph of his genius, Marnocke Burne was interviewed a reporter of the "Kilmarnock Herald," at his luxurious chambers in Soulis Street.

       "Do you know Derek Clyde?" was the first question.

       "I know him only by repute," smilingly answered The Great Detective. "He is on the advertising staff of the 'Daily Record and Mail.'"

       "What do you think of him?" was the reporter's next question.

       "I never think of him at all," replied Marnocke Burne as he handed the pressman a box of Wild Woodbine cigarettes, specially tamed by himself. "Derek Clyde is struggling along to make his bread and butter, but I go for big steaks."

       "Have you many commissions on hand just Now?" went on the taker of notes.

       "Yes, a few small things. In fifteen minutes I leave for Dublin to recover the Crown jewels, and following that I am urgently wanted in Paris, Stewarton, Berlin, Ayr, New York, Largs, and Melbourne. In July I expect to take a month's holiday at Troon. And, now, I most bid you good morning as I have much to do before train time. So saying, The Great Detective hurried leaving the wonderstruck reporter to find his way out. Before doing so, however, he filled his case with Wild Woodbines, remarking (for he was a bit of a humourist) "we'll see how long it takes him to find the missing fags."

HARRIS TWEED.       

(The End).