Well, he determined, with the ferocious resoluteness of a dogged soul, to follow Lord Dolmer’s advice. He said to himself that there ought to be no special difficulty in doing so, since only three days had passed since he first saw this creature whom he was enjoined to forget. He walked slowly along Piccadilly, down Regent Street, and through Trafalgar Square to his little office in Adelphi Terrace. Some trifling business awaited him there, and this occupied him till the hour of luncheon. He then went out and lunched, as his custom was, at Gatti’s.

Richard’s usual mode of life was extremely simple. His office, a single small room, was on the third-floor of No. 4, Adelphi Terrace. On the fourth-floor he had a bedroom, rather larger than the office, and quite commodious enough for the uses of a young bachelor who had no fancy tastes. When occasion needed he used the office as a sitting-room. All his meals he took out of doors. His breakfasts, which cost him fourpence, he consumed at a vegetarian restaurant hard by; his luncheons and dinners were eaten at Gatti’s. Frequently at the latter establishment he would be content with a dish of macaroni and half a pint of bitter, at an expenditure of eightpence—a satisfying repast. His total expenses were thus very small, and hence, although his income was irregular and fluctuating, he nevertheless continually saved money. It was seldom that less than one hundred pounds stood between him and the workhouse. In case of necessity he could have lived for a whole year, or even two years, on one hundred pounds. So he was always in an independent position. He could always afford not to bend the knee to any employer or client. He was, in fact, just what he looked, a shrewd and confident man, successful and well dressed, who knew how to take care of himself. He spent more on his wardrobe than on anything else, and this, not because he was a coxcomb, but from purely commercial motives. He accepted the world as he found the world, and he had learnt that clothes counted.

All afternoon he did nothing but idle about in his office, wondering whether by that time Lord Dolmer had told Simon Lock of the barren result of his inquiries, and wondering also what the upshot of their interview would be. At seven he dined at Gatti’s. At eight he returned to Adelphi Terrace, and ascended directly to his bedroom. Opening the window wide, he placed an easy-chair in front of it, lighted a pipe, and sat down to perpend upon things in general.

Richard had chosen this bedroom because of its view. It looked out at an angle on the river Thames, stateliest and most romantic of busy streams. It is doubtful if any capital in Europe, unless it be Buda-Pesth, the twin city on the blue Danube, can show a scene equal in beauty to the Thames Embankment and the Thames when the hues and mysteries of sunset are upon them. This particular evening was more than commonly splendid, for after a day of heavy rain the clouds had retreated, and the sun burst out in richest radiance. The red jury-sails of the barges as they floated up-stream with the flowing tide took on the tints of the ruby. The vast masonry of Waterloo Bridge and of Somerset House seemed like gigantic and strange temples uncannily suspended over the surface of the glooming water. In the west Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament stood silhouetted in profound black against the occidental sky. The sky was like Joseph’s coat there, but in the east it was like a maiden’s scarf.

Up from the Embankment rose the hum and roar and rattle of London’s ceaseless traffic. The hansoms had lighted their starry lamps, and they flitted below like fireflies in the shadows of a wood. No stranger could have guessed that they were mere hackney vehicles plying at the fixed rate of two miles for one shilling, and sixpence for every subsequent mile or part of a mile.

‘Yes,’ Richard mused, ‘this is all very well, and I am enjoying it, and nothing could be very much better; but the fact remains that I haven’t earned a cent this blessed day. The fact also remains that I am a bit of a frost. Further, and thirdly, the fact remains that the present state of affairs must be immediately altered.’

His pipe went out.

‘I’ll look in at the Empire,’ he said.

Now, by what process of reasoning a young man who, on his own confession, had drawn a blank day could arrive at the conclusion that the proper thing to do was to go to the Empire we cannot explain. But so it was. He looked at his watch. The hour was nine-fifteen. Half an hour yet, for no self-respecting man-about-town ever thinks of entering the Empire before a quarter to ten! At this point Richard probably fell into a doze. At any rate, a knock on his bedroom-door had to be repeated several times before it attracted his attention.

‘What is it?’ he answered at length.

‘A person to see you, sir,’ said a feminine voice, not without asperity.

‘A person to see me! Oh! ah! er!... Show him into the office. I’ll be down directly.’

He descended to the third-floor, and, instead of the Somerset House acquaintance whom he had expected, he found the very last person that by all the laws of chance ought to have been in his office—he found Mrs. Bridget.

Mrs. Bridget turned round and faced him as he went into the little paper-strewn room. She was dressed in black alpaca, with a curiously-shaped flat black bonnet. Her hands, which were decently covered with black gloves, she held folded in front of her.

Richard said nothing at first. He was too astounded, and—shall we say?—pleased. He scented what the reporters call ‘further revelations’ of an interesting nature.

‘Good-avenin’,’ said Bridget; ‘and can ye see a lady privately?’

‘Certainly,’ said Richard, ‘I can see you privately; but,’ he added, with a mischievous smile, ‘I’m afraid our interview won’t amount to much unless you’re more communicative than you were this morning.’

‘Bless and save ye, sir! ’tis not meself that wants ye—’tis her.’

‘Her?’

‘The misthress sent me up to find out whisht whether ye could be seen.’

‘Miss Craig is outside?’

‘The same, sir. Ye’ll see her?’

‘See her? Naturally I will see her. But—but—how did you discover my address?’

By this time they were hurrying down the multitudinous steps to the ground-floor.

‘Sure, we called at the Williamson Company, and they said you’d left and they didn’t know your address. And then we came out, and who should we see but Mr. Puddephatt leading a pony. ’Twas the Virgin’s own miracle! “Hullo!” he says, lifting his hat.

“Puddephatt,” says my mistress——’

The recital was never finished, for at that moment they reached the front-door. In the roadway stood the DÉcauville motor with lights gleaming. By the side of the DÉcauville stood Teresa Craig enveloped in a gray mackintosh.

Richard’s face showed his intense pleasure at the most unlooked-for encounter.

‘Miss Craig,’ he said eagerly, ‘I hope you are in no trouble. Can I be of any assistance?’

She glanced at him coldly, inimically.

‘Mr. Redgrave,’ she replied with bitterness, and then looked about—the little street was deserted—‘I have come to seek an explanation from you. If you are an honourable man you will give it. And I have come, much against my inclination, to ask a favour. Bridget, take care of the motor.’

She swept imperially before him into the portals of the house.

‘Mr. Redgrave,’ said Teresa, in a tone which clearly indicated that she meant to lead the conversation, ‘we have not seen each other since I was so foolish as to faint in the—the shed.’

They sat together in Richard’s little office. It was not without difficulty that he had induced her even to sit down. Her demeanour was hostile. Her fine, imperious face had a stormy and implacable look—a look almost resentful, and Richard felt something of a culprit before that gaze. He met her eyes, however, with such bravery as he could muster.

‘Not since then,’ he assented. ‘I trust you are fully recovered, Miss Craig.’

Ignoring the utterance of this polite hope, she resumed:

‘I have to thank you for the service you rendered on Saturday night.’

‘It was nothing,’ he said, in a voice as cold and formal as her own.

‘It was everything,’ she corrected him gravely. ‘I might have lost my life but for you.’

‘I am happy to have been of any assistance,’ he said. But his thoughts ran: ‘She hasn’t come to London to tell me this. What the deuce, then, has she come for?’

‘Bridget tells me you had an interview with my father that night. May I ask what passed?’ Teresa continued.

‘You have not seen your father since then?’ said Richard.

‘I have not.’ Her voice seemed momentarily to break.

‘Or doubtless he would have told you?’

‘Doubtless.’

Richard determined to try a bold stroke.

‘I understood from Mr. Craig that he wished our interview to be strictly confidential.’

‘What?’ she cried. ‘From me? From his daughter?’

She stood up, suddenly angry.

‘If, indeed, you are his daughter,’ said Richard quietly.

Her eyes blazed, and her hands shook; but she collected herself, and smiled bitterly:

‘You, then, have heard that silly rumour?’

‘By chance I heard it,’ he admitted.

‘And you believe it?’

‘I neither believe it nor disbelieve it. What has it to do with me?’

‘Exactly,’ she said; ‘a very proper question. What has it to do with you? Listen, Mr. Redgrave. I have the most serious reasons for asking you to tell me what passed between yourself and my father on Saturday night.’

A look of feminine appeal passed swiftly across her features. Fleeting as it was, it sufficed to conquer Richard. A minute ago he had meant to dominate her. Now he was dominated.

‘I will tell you,’ he said simply, and told her—told her everthing without any reservation.

‘Then my father did not accuse you of being a professional spy?’ she demanded when Richard had finished.

‘No,’ said Richard, somewhat abashed.

‘He did not accuse you of having entered our house under entirely false pretences?’

‘No,’ said Richard, still more abashed.

There was a silence.

‘I wonder,’ she said calmly, glancing out of the window, ‘I wonder why he did not.’

She made the remark as though she were speculating privately upon a curious but not very important point.

‘Miss Craig!’ he exclaimed, with an air of being affronted.

I read in a famous book the other day,’ she went on, ‘these words: “A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life.”’

‘Do you mean to insinuate,’ said Richard, forced to defend himself, ‘that I am a professional spy?’

‘I not only mean to insinuate it, I mean to assert it,’ she announced loftily, and then continued more quickly: ‘Mr. Redgrave, why did you come to spy on us? For two whole days I trusted you, and I liked you. But that night, as soon as I saw you behind me in the shed, the truth burst upon me. It was that, more than anything else, that caused me to faint. Why did you do it, Mr. Redgrave? My father liked you; I—I—I——’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Surely a man of your talents could have found a profession more honourable than that of a spy?’

She looked at him, less angry than reproachful.

‘I am a private detective,’ said Richard sullenly, ‘not a spy. My business is perfectly respectable.’

‘Why trouble to play with words?’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘We took you for a gentleman. In our simplicity we took you for a gentleman.’

‘Which I trust I am,’ said Richard.

‘Prove it!’ she cried.

‘I will prove it in any manner you choose.’

‘I accept your promise,’ she said. ‘I have travelled up to London to make an appeal to you to abandon this inquiry which you have undertaken—at whose instance I know not.’

‘I cannot abandon it now,’ he said mischievously.

‘Why?’ she queried.

‘Question for question,’ he retorted. ‘How did you discover that I was a professional spy, as you call it?’

‘Bah!’ she replied. ‘Simply by asking. When I got your address, the rest was easy. So you decline to be a gentleman in the manner that I suggest? I might have anticipated as much. I might have known that I was coming to London on a fool’s errand. And yet something in your face hinted to me that perhaps after all——’

‘Miss Craig,’ he said earnestly, ‘I cannot, abandon the inquiry now, because I have already abandoned it. I came down to London this morning with the intention of doing nothing more in the matter, and by noon to-day I had informed my clients to that effect.’

‘I was not, then, mistaken in you,’ she murmured.

To his intense astonishment there was the tremor of a sob in that proud voice.

‘Not entirely mistaken,’ he said, with a faint smile.

‘What induced you to give up the business of spying upon us?’ she asked, looking at him.

‘How can I tell?’ he answered; ‘conscience, perhaps, though a private detective is not supposed to possess such a thing. Perhaps I did it because I reciprocated your sentinents towards me, Miss Craig.’

‘My sentiments towards you?’

‘Yes,’ he said audaciously. ‘You said just how that you liked me.’

Instead of taking offence, she positively smiled. She had the courage of a guileless heart.

‘And let me tell you, Miss Craig,’ he went on, and his earnestness became passionate, ‘that I will do anything that lies in my power to serve you. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care what trouble you are in; count on me.’

‘How do you know that I am in trouble?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said; ‘I merely feel it Miss Craig, let me help you.’

‘You don’t know what you are saying,’ she replied evasively.

He jumped up and seized her hand, the small hand, browned by summer sunshine.

‘Let me help you,’ he repeated.

‘If you knew,’ she said, hiding her face, ‘what trouble I am in!’

He saw that she was crying. She drew away her hand impulsively.

‘I will help you!’ he exclaimed; ‘the spy the scorned spy, insists on helping you. No, tell me.’

‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘I came to London to entreat your silence and inaction. I went about the affair in a strange and silly way, but it happens that I have succeeded. You have promised to do nothing further. That suffices Let me go.’

‘You shall not go,’ he almost shouted; ‘I tell you you shall not go until you have confided in me. I owe you some reparation, and I positively insist on giving it.’

She raised her face and gazed at him.

‘I am the child of all misfortune,’ she said ‘as my country is the most unfortunate of countries. Mr. Redgrave, my father has disappeared.’

‘Oh!’ he said, as if to say, ‘Is that all?’

‘And I dare not search for him.’

‘They told me at the bank that he had gone on his annual holiday.’

‘Then you inquired at the bank?’ she asked swiftly.

‘It was my last act of spying,’ he said. ‘Why dare you not search for your father, Miss Craig?’

‘Because—because I might find more than I wished to find.’

‘You talk in riddles,’ he said firmly. ‘We can do nothing here; let us go back to Hockiffe.

I will accompany you, and on the way you shall answer my questions. I have many to put to you. Leave everything to me; imagine that I am your brother. I have often laughed at the man’s phrase to a woman, “I would lay down my life for you,” but at this moment I feel what it means. Do not mistake me; do not think I am talking wildly. Perhaps I have a better idea of your trouble than you think. But, in any case, you must trust me as you trusted me when first you saw me. You must rely on me. Come, let us go.’

She rose and moved towards the door, ‘Thanks,’ she said, nothing more than that—‘thanks.’

In one part of his mind Richard wondered at himself, in another he felt curiously and profoundly happy.