called Spring when you were born, Summer when you were twenty-one, Autumn
when you became a policeman, and Winter when you reached your present
rank."

"Oh, Christopher!" cried the detective. "And if I were made Chief
Inspector?"

"Then your title would be 'Top Dog' or something of the sort."

Mr. Winter assimilated the foregoing information with a profound
thankfulness that we in England do these things differently.

"Why are you so interested in Mr. Okasaki?" he inquired.

"I will answer your question by another. Why was he so interested in the
Ko-Katana?"

"That is hardly what I told you, Mr. Brett. He professed to be interested
in the crime itself. But now I come to think of it, he did ask me to let
him see the thing."

"And did you?"

"Yes; I wanted all the information I could get."

"My position exactly. Let us go to Scotland Yard."

The famous Black Museum has so often been the subject of articles in the
public press that no detailed description is needed here. It contains, in
glass cases, or hanging on the walls, a weird collection of articles