Thames; to this he withdrew, and
leaning on the sill looked out and considered matters. Should he go
and--if he could gain admittance--beard these two conspirators? Should
he wait until the woman came out and let her see that he was on the
track? Should he hide again until she went, and then see Elphick alone?

In the end Spargo did none of these things immediately. He let things
slide for the moment. He lighted a cigarette and stared at the river
and the brown sails, and the buildings across on the Surrey side. Ten
minutes went by--twenty minutes--nothing happened. Then, as half-past
nine struck from all the neighbouring clocks, Spargo flung away a
second cigarette, marched straight down the corridor and knocked boldly
at Mr. Elphick's door.

Greatly to Spargo's surprise, the door was opened before there was any
necessity to knock again. And there, calmly confronting him, a
benevolent, yet somewhat deprecating expression on his spectacled and
placid face, stood Mr. Elphick, a smoking cap on his head, a tasseled
smoking jacket over his dress shirt, and a short pipe in his hand.

Spargo was taken aback: Mr. Elphick apparently was not. He held the
door well open, and motioned the journalist to enter.

"Come in, Mr. Spargo," he said. "I was expecting you. Walk forward into
my sitting-room."

Spargo, much astonished at this reception, passed through an ante-room
into a handsomely furnished apartment full of books and pictures. In
spite of the fact that it was still very little past midsummer there
was a cheery fire in the grate, and on a table set near a roomy
arm-chair was set such creature comforts as a spirit-case, a syphon, a
tumbler, and a novel--from which things Spargo argued that Mr. Elphick
had been taking his ease since his dinner. But in another armchair on
the opposite side of the hearth was the forbidding figure of Miss
Baylis, blacker, gloomier, more mysterious than ever. She neither spoke
nor moved when Spargo entered: she did not even look at him. And Spargo
stood staring at her until Mr. Elphick, having closed his doors,
touched him on the elbow, and motioned him courteously to a seat.

"Yes, I was expecting you, Mr. Spargo," he said, as he resumed his own
chair. "I have been expecting you at any time, ever since you took up
your investigation of the Marbury affair, in some of the earlier stages
of which you saw me, you will remember, at the mortuary. But since Miss
Baylis told me, twenty minutes ago