mistake in the initial stages, my boy--oh, yes!"

Spargo got up from his desk and walked around his room for a few
minutes, Rathbury meanwhile finding and lighting another cigar. At last
Spargo came back and clapped a hand on the detective's shoulder.

"Look here, Rathbury!" he said. "It's very evident that you're now
going on the lines that Aylmore did murder Marbury. Eh?"

Rathbury looked up. His face showed astonishment.

"After evidence like that!" he exclaimed. "Why, of course. There's the
motive, my son, the motive!"

Spargo laughed.

"Rathbury!" he said. "Aylmore no more murdered Marbury than you did!"

The detective got up and put on his hat.

"Oh!" he said. "Perhaps you know who did, then?"

"I shall know in a few days," answered Spargo.

Rathbury stared wonderingly at him. Then he suddenly walked to the
door. "Good-night!" he said gruffly.

"Good-night, Rathbury," replied Spargo and sat down at his desk.

But that night Spargo wrote nothing for the _Watchman_. All he wrote
was a short telegram addressed to Aylmore's daughters. There were only
three words on it--_Have no fear._

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE CLOSED DOORS

Alone of all the London morning newspapers, the _Watchman_ appeared
next day destitute of sensationalism in respect to the Middle Temple
Murder. The other daily journals published more or less vivid accounts
of the identification of Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P. for the Brookminster
Division, as the _ci-devant_ Stephen Ainsworth, ex-convict, once upon a
time founder and secretary of the Hearth and Home Mutual Benefit
Society, the headquarters of which had been at Cloudhampton, in
Daleshire; the fall of which had involved thousands of honest working
folk in terrible distress if not in absolute ruin. Most of them had
raked up Ainsworth's past to considerable journalistic purpose: it had
been an easy matter to turn up old files, to recount the fall of the
Hearth and Home, to tell anew the story of the privations of the humble
investors whose small hoards had gone in the crash; it had been easy,
too, to set out again the history of Ainsworth's arrest, trial, and
fate. There was plenty of romance in the story: it was that of a man
who by his financial ability had built up a great industrial insurance
society; had--as was alleged--converted the large sums entrusted to him
to his own purposes; had been detected and punished; had disappeared,
after his punishment, so effectually that