ven to this ex-agent--the
cause for search, that he had abducted and was concealing his
granddaughter from her father. It was easy for me to perceive why this
novel search had hitherto failed, no suspicion being entertained that
Waife had separated himself from Sophy, and the inquiry being therefore
rather directed towards the grandchild than the grandfather. But that
inquiry had altogether ceased of late, and for this terrible reason--a
different section of the police had fixed its eye upon the father on
whose behalf the search had been instituted. This Jasper Losely (ah!
our poor friend might well shudder to think Sophy should fall into
his hands!) haunts the resorts of the most lawless and formidable
desperadoes of London. He appears to be a kind of authority amongst
them; but there is no evidence that as yet he has committed himself to
any participation in their habitual courses. He lives profusely, for a
person in such society (regaling Daredevils whom he awes by a strength
and courage which are described as extraordinary), but with out any
visible means. It seems that the ex-agent, who had been thus previously
employed in Jasper Losely's name, had been engaged, not by Jasper
himself, but by a person in very respectable circumstances, whose name
I have ascertained to be Poole. And the ex-agent deemed it right to
acquaint this Mr. Poole with Jasper's evil character and ambiguous mode
of life, and to intimate to his employer that it might not be prudent to
hold any connection with such a man, and still less proper to assist
in restoring a young girl to his care. On this Mr. Poole became so much
agitated, and expressed himself so incoherently as to his relations with
Jasper, that the ex-agent conceived suspicions against Poole himself,
and reported the whole circumstances to one of the chiefs of the former
service, through whom they reached the very man whom I myself was
employing. But this ex-agent, who had, after his last interview with
Poole, declined all further interference, had since then, through a
correspondent in a country town, whom he had employed at the first,
obtained a clue to my dear old friend's wanderings, more recent, and
I think more hopeful, than any I had yet discovered. You will remember
that when questioning Sophy as to any friends in her former life to whom
it was probable Waife might have addressed himself, she could think of
no one so probable as a cobbler named Merle, with whom he and she had