en?" he whispered. "Just tell me that, Joe?"

"Primrose Hill," said the other briefly. "You'll know all about it
in a minute or two, for it'll be all in the last editions of the
evening papers. That's what's been arranged."

"No arrest I suppose?"

Chandler shook his head despondently. "No," he said, "I'm inclined
to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time. But one
can only do one's best. I don't know if Mrs. Bunting told you I'd
got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just
before closing-time. Well, she's said all she knew, and it's as
clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about
was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just because she
told him she was a teetotaller!" He laughed ruefully.

Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. "Well, that's a queer
thing for a barmaid to be!" he exclaimed. "She's niece to the people
what keeps the public," explained Chandler; and then he went out of
the front door with a cheerful "So long!"

When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.
She had gone downstairs with the tray. "Where's my girl?" he said
irritably.

"She's just taken the tray downstairs."

He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply,
"Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?"

"Yes, father," came her eager, happy voice.

"Better come up out of that cold kitchen."

He turned and came back to his wife. "Ellen, is the lodger in? I
haven't heard him moving about. Now mind what I says, please! I
don't want Daisy to be mixed up with him."

"Mr. Sleuth don't seem very well to-day," answered Mrs. Bunting
quietly. "'Tain't likely I should let Daisy have anything to do
with him. Why, she's never even seen him. 'Tain't likely I should
allow her to begin waiting on him now."

But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in
which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind.
So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful
secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or
two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for
her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another,
and that other her husband.

Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the
thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only
because she had always credited the police with supernatural power