joke of quizzing the detective a little bit. I
was immensely tickled at the idea of your
employing the man, and his looking after
you. So I told him I knew Mr. Dallas was
acquainted with a gentleman of that name, and
could give him all the information he required."

George could not laugh, but he tried to smile.
Nothing could lend the subject of his uncle's
suspense and anxiety even a collaterally amusing
effect for him, and this statement puzzled him.

"What on earth can I have to do with the
matter:'' he said. "The man must be travelling
very far indeed out of the right tracks. No
one in the world, as it is pretty plain, can be
more ignorant of Felton's affairs than I am.
He must be on a totally wrong scent; and if
he has blundered in this way, it is only waste of
time and money to employ him."

"Well," said Cunningham, a little
disappointed that George did not enjoy the
keenness of the capital joke as much as he did,
"you must settle all that with him yourself, and
find out from him, if you can—and, by Jove, I
doubt it—how Paul Ward has got mixed up in
your cousin's affairs (if he has got mixed up in
them—and. mind, I don't feel sure even of that
—he certainly did not say so) without your
being a party to the transaction. I just gave
Tatlow your address in Piccadilly, and told him
you'd be there in a day or two."

"What did he say?" asked George, whose
sense of mystification was increasing.

"Said he should call every day until you
arrived,—no doubt he has been there to-day,
or you'll find him there when you get home,—
and disappeared, having got all the information
I chose to give him, but not what he wanted;
which is, I take it, the correct thing to do to a
detective who observes the laws of discretion
too absolutely."

Cunningham was laughing his jolly laugh,
and George was wondering what Tatlow meant,
when the entrance of a third individual on office
business interrupted the friends' talk. George
took leave, and went down-stairs. Arrived
at the door, he stopped, ran up the first
flight of dirty stairs again, and turned into a
small room, dimly lighted by a dirty skylight,
to the right of ttie first landing. In this sanctuary,
strong smelling of dust, size, and printer's
ink, lay files, bound and unbound, of The
Mercury. A heavy volume was open on the
clumsy thick-legged table which filled up the
centre of the room. It contained the files of the
newspaper for the first half of the current year.

"Let me see," said George, "she was not
quite sure about the 22nd; but it must have
been about that date.''

Then he turned the leaves, and scanned the
columns of advertisements, until he found in
one the warning which Clare Carruthers had
sent to Paul Ward. His eyes filled with tears
as he read it. He called up one of the office
people, and had a copy of the paper of that
date looked for, out of which he carefully cut
the advertisement, and consigned it to the keeping
of the pocket-book which he always carried
about him. He placed the little slip of printed
paper in the same compartment in which Clare
Carruthers's unconscious gift had so long lain
hidden. As George threw open the doors of
the hansom in which he had been driven from
The Mercury office to Piccadilly, Jim Swain
came to the wheel, and, touching his tousled
head, asked if he might speak to him.

"Certainly," said George, getting out; "any
message from Mr. Routh?"

"No, sir," said Jim, "it's not; it's something
very partic'lar, as I as 'ad to say to you
this long time. It ain't rightly about myself—
and—"

"Never mind, Jim; you can tell me all about
it in the house," said George, cheerily. "Come
along." He opened the door with his key, and
let himself and Jim into the hall. But there
Mr. Felton met him, his face grave and
careworn, and, as George saw in a minute, with
some additional lines of trouble in it.

"I'm so glad you have come, George. I
found letters here when I got back."

"Letters from New York?"

"Yes."

George left Jim standing on the mat, going
with his uncle into the room he had just left.

Mr. James Swain, who was accustomed to
pass a good deal of his life in waiting about on
steps, in passages, at horses' heads, and
occasionally in kitchens, and to whom the comfortable
hall of the house in Piccadilly presented
itself as an agreeable temporary abode,
considered it advisable to sit down and attend the
leisure of Mr. Dallas. He had been for some
minutes engaged, partly in thinking what he
should say to Mr. Dallas, partly in counting the
squares in the tiles which floored the hall, hearing
all the while a subdued sound of voices
from the adjoining room, when a strange sort of
cry reached his ears. He started up, and listened
intently. The cry was not repeated; but in a
few moments Mr. Felton came into the hall,
looking frightened, and called loudly down the
lower staircase for assistance. Two servants, a
man and a woman, came quickly, and in the
meantime Jim looked in at the open door. In
another minute they were all in the dining-room
in a confused group, gathered round an armchair,
in which was lying the insensible, death-like
figure of George Dallas, his collar and necktie
torn off, his waistcoat open, several letters
on the table before him, and a card on the floor
at his feet.

It was a very complete and dead swoon, and
there was no explanation of it; none to be
given to the servants, at least. Jim Swain did
not touch George—he only looked on; and as,
at the suggestion of the woman, they opened the
window, and pushed the chair on which George
was lying within the current of air, he picked
up the card, over which one of the castors had
passed. It was a small photographic portrait.
The boy looked at it, and recognised, with
surprise, that it was the likeness of Mr. Deane—
that it was a fac-simile of a portrait he had
looked at and handled a very little while ago.