"A detective. Brown's my name. I'm here hunting for something. I got part of what I wanted, but not all. What I want isn't here, or I'd have found it; there's only three or four places it'd have been locked up. I know," he ended, with driving confidence, "that a letter was written to Mrs. De Peyster by the Duke de Crécy saying he couldn't marry her. That letter is what I'm after." "Oh!" breathed Mr. Pyecroft. And then with his wide-eyed mediocrity, "I wonder whom you represent." "Mrs. Allistair!" exclaimed Matilda. Mrs. De Peyster long since had been silently exclaiming the same. "Why, what could Mrs. Allistair want it for?" queried the futile-looking brother. "Never mind who I represent, or the reasons of the party," said Mr. Brown. "That letter is what I'm after, and I'm willing to pay for it. That's what ought to concern you folks." "But if there ever was such a letter," commented Mr. Pyecroft with his simple-minded manner, "perhaps Mrs. de Peyster destroyed it." "Perhaps she did. But I found two others he wrote her. And if she didn't tear it up or burn it, I'm going to have it!" He directed himself at Matilda, and spoke slowly, suggestively, impressively. "Confidential servants, who think a bit of number one, should be on the lookout for documents and letters that may be of future value to themselves. I guess you get me. For the original of the letter I'm willing to come across with five hundred dollars." "But I have no such letter!" cried Matilda. "I might make it a thousand," conceded the detective. "And," he added, "the money might come in very handy for your sick sister there." "But I tell you I have no such letter!" "Say fifteen hundred, then." "But I haven't got it!" cried Matilda. "Perhaps you may have it without knowing what it is. Some of his letters he signed only with an initial. Here is a sample of the Duke's handwriting--one of his letters I found." "I tell you I have--" "Pardon me, Mr. Brown," interrupted the ineffectual-looking Mr. Pyecroft. "May I see the handwriting, please?" Firmly holding it in his own hands, the detective displayed the letter to Mr. Pyecroft--an odd, foreign hand, the paper of superfine quality, but without crest or any other embossing. Mr. Pyecroft studied it closely; his look grew puzzled; then he turned to Matilda. "I don't exactly remember, Matilda, but it seems to me that there was handwriting like this among the letters you sent to me to keep for you." Matilda gaped at Mr. Pyecroft. Mrs. De Peyster, half-rising on an elbow, peered in amazed stupefaction at her incalculable young man of the sea. "Why, of course, she'd have turned it over to some one else for safe-keeping!" the detective cried triumphantly. "Where is it?" he demanded of Mr. Pyecroft.