I had heard the same thing said about the police, and recalled what I had heard McSheen say to Wringman about keeping them from interfering. But I felt that they were probably right in their views about Elsa. I had recourse to my detective again, and gave him all the information I possessed. "Oh! We'll find out where she is," he said, with that inscrutably placid look on his face which I had learned was the veil under which he masked both his feelings and his purposes. "You can tell her father she isn't dead." This in answer to the old man's suggestion that she had been murdered, which I had repeated. Then he added, "But there are worse things than death." His eyes glistened and he buttoned up his coat in a way he had when there was any sharp work on hand. It always reminded me of a duellist. In a few days he had a clew to the lost girl, and justified my suspicions. It was as I feared. Pushkin had inveigled her from her home and had taken her to a house which, if not precisely what I apprehended, was not less vile. It was one of those doubly disreputable places which, while professing to be reasonably respectable, is really more dangerous than the vilest den. The girl was possibly not actually at the place now, but had been there. Getting some suspicion of the place, she had insisted on leaving, but the woman of the house, said Langton, knew where she was. "She is a hard one to handle. She has protection." "Of the police?" "Of those who control the police. She has powerful friends." "I don't care how powerful they are, I will get that girl," I said. I hesitated what to do. I had not wholly abandoned hope of making up my trouble with Eleanor Leigh. I did not wish my name to be mixed up in a scandal which probably would get into the papers. I determined to consult John Marvel, and I said so to Langton. "You mean the preacher? Won't do any harm. He's straight. He's helping to hunt for her, too. I saw him just after I located her, and he had already heard." I determined to go and see him, and told Langton to keep on following up his clew. When I went to Marvel's house, however, he was not at home. He had been away all day, since early morning, the girl who opened the door told me. I went to the police station. Marvel had been there and made a complaint about a house, and they were going to send a man around to investigate.