It was a heartless business, as it came to be revealed. Hamlin, Superintendent Ingram to the contrary, had really been in a ruinous financial fix; he was a creature all selfishness and sensuality, and the scheme, cleverly worked, seemed fairly safe from detection. The girl Jennett, his mistress and decoy, an actress and prestidigitateur by profession, had imposed herself as a servant upon Valkenburg to whom she was unknown. The Dutchman, though perfectly innocent of any share in the plot, was susceptible, the girl pretty and the bait took. Valkenburg, a traveller in diamonds, was led to expect the receipt of a parcel of stones from Hamlin, with whom he had had some past dealings; the parcel, as he was able to swear, was never delivered; Hamlin wrote to enquire as to the non-acknowledgment of its receipt, and so the conspiracy was launched. The decoy in the meantime had been plying the unhappy young postman with her coquetries; he took fire readily; on the morning of the delivery of the registered packet, she pretended to procure her master’s signature to the receipt, which, in the course of some playful passages under the mistletoe--it was Christmas time--she feigned to return with her own fair fingers to Baxter’s pocket-book, sending her victim on his way to doom and disgrace with a bounding heart and a mind wholly absorbed in its own amorous raptures. To the last the poor dupe had believed in her affection, and had hoped against hope, that she would exonerate him. But Miss Jennett, when once he was disposed of, had discovered a more personal call upon her interests in the infidelity of her confederate, and the means he had taken to kill time during the weeks of their enforced separation. Promptly she had disappeared, and, from some unknown address, written to upbraid the delinquent with his treachery, and to inform him as to her precautionary preservation of the registered packet (it was found, when opened by Gilead in the presence of Superintendent Ingram, to contain a few fragments of coal, addressed, of course, to Valkenburg in Hamlin’s writing) and of her intention to use it for the purpose of revenging herself on him. The advertisement in the Agony Column had resulted, and finally, after a struggle with herself, she had telegraphed to her scoundrel to meet her outside the house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road--with what result here witnesseth. The villain in chief received an exemplary sentence, and Baxter his Majesty’s gracious pardon for being innocent. But the Post Office, naturally enough, would not employ him again, and Gilead, great to the end, found a situation for him. As to Miss Jennett, she simply repeated her former tactics, and disappeared. CHAPTER X. THE QUEST OF THE SHADOW There came a certain September evening whose memory was destined to imprint itself ineffaceably on the souls of the three most intimately associated in the conduct of the Agency.