she were in prison.




CHAPTER II

THE KIDNAPING OF EVA WILKINSON


The Queen's Square affair seemed to have exhausted Quarles's enthusiasm.
I tried to interest him in several cases without success, and I began to
think we really had done our last work together, when on his own
initiative he mentioned Ewart Wilkinson to me. He had a personal interest
in the man; I had only just heard his name.

The multi-millionaire is not such a figure in this country as he is in
America, but Ewart Wilkinson was undoubtedly on the American scale. He
had made his money abroad, how or exactly where remained matters of
uncertainty, and if one were inclined to believe the stories told in
irresponsible journals, there must have been much in the past which he
found it wiser not to talk about. With such tales I have nothing to do. I
never met the millionaire, was, in fact, quite uninterested in him until
his wealth was concerned in a case which came into my hands.

With Christopher Quarles it was different. For a few days on one occasion
he had stayed in the same house with the millionaire in Scotland, and had
been impressed with him. Wilkinson was rough, but a diamond under the
rough, according to Quarles. He may have had his own ideas of what
constituted legitimate business, but whatever his shortcomings, the