When therefore Lane walked into the little parlour of the cottage at Petersham the day after the interview at Scotland Yard with MacKenzie, after having apprised Croxton by a telegram that he was coming to see him, the young man received him with a certain embarrassment. The detective went to the point at once. “I thought it was about time we met, Mr. Croxton,” he began. When Lane had once made up his mind that the time had arrived for abandoning his usual reticence, he did so whole-heartedly. And his manner to-day was perfectly cordial, the more especially as he perceived Richard’s embarrassment, and, of course, was shrewd enough to divine the cause of it. As briefly as he could, and with admirable lucidity, he narrated to his attentive listener all the things that had come to light since he had taken up the investigation; the brief history of Mrs. Morrice’s life in the little village of Brinkstone where she had made the acquaintance of Archibald Brookes the elder, and no doubt that of the two other brothers, Charles and the present Sir George; her close friendship for a few months with Alma Buckley; the discovery from perfectly reliable evidence that young Archie Brookes was neither Sir George’s nephew nor her own, although it served their purpose to pass him off as such; the admission by Mr. Morrice that he had lost or mislaid the original memorandum containing a full description of the mechanism of the safe; the fact that Archie Brookes had been brought up by the woman Alma Buckley, and had, previously to his adoption by Sir George, been engaged in a humble mercantile occupation. There were a few things he did not mention, one of them being the fact that Sir George was suspected at Scotland Yard of being engaged in certain criminal enterprises with some leading spirits of the underworld. Also he made no mention of the anonymous letter. For the present he kept all this in reserve. Needless to say that Richard was much astounded at these revelations, especially at the fact of the imposture of young Archie Brookes, with Mrs. Morrice’s connivance, and the loss of the important memorandum relating to the safe. “You have not told anything of this to Miss Sheldon,” was his first comment. “Or, if you have done so, it would be under the seal of secrecy, as otherwise she would have taken me into her confidence.” “No, I have not said a word to Miss Sheldon,” was Lane’s answer. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Croxton, in our profession we are not too prone to make confidantes of women. We respect their good and noble qualities, but we distrust their impulsiveness, their incapacity to keep a secret where secrecy is of vital importance.” Croxton was bound to agree with this general estimate. Women were by temperament unfitted to be the coadjutors of men in transactions of this special nature.