"And I wish I could confide this to you," said Bede, steadily and candidly. "I'd be glad enough to get it out of my keeping, for I don't know what to do with it. If no one but myself were concerned; if I could disclose it to you without the risk of injuring others you should hear it this next minute. For their sakes, Mr. Butterby, my lips are tied. I dare not speak." "Does he mean his wife, or doesn't he?" thought Butterby. And the question was not solvable. "I'll look after Hurst a bit," he said aloud. "Truth to tell, I considered him the safest of them all, in spite of your opinion, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and have let him be. He shall get a little of my private attention now. And so shall one of the others," the detective mentally added. "Unsuspected by Hurst himself," enjoined Bede, a shade of anxiety in his voice. Could Mr. Butterby have been suspected of so far forgetting professional dignity as to indulge in winks, it might have seemed that he answered by one, as he rose from his chair. "I'll just take a look in upon them now," he remarked. "And let me advise you, sir, to get your father in a more reasonable frame of mind, if possible. If he calls in fresh aid, as he threatens, there might be the dickens to pay." Bede Greatorex crossed the room hastily, as though he meant to guard the middle door, and spoke in a low tone. "I do not care that they should know you have been with me. Not for the world would I let it come to their knowledge that I doubt either of them." "Now _do_ you suppose that I am a young gosling?" demanded Butterby. "You have done me the honour to confide this private business to my hands, Mr. Bede Greatorex, and you may safely leave it in 'em. After being at the work so many years, there's not much left for me to be taught." He departed by the passage, treading lightly, and halted when he came to the clerks' door. He was in deep thought. This matter which, as he phrased it, Mr. Bede Greatorex had done him the honour to put in his hands, was no such great matter after all; a mere trifle in professional quarters: but few things had so much puzzled the detective. Not in his way to discovery: that, as it seemed to him, would be very easy, could he pursue it openly. Bede Greatorex puzzled him; his ambiguous words puzzled him; the thing itself puzzled him. In most cases Mr. Butterby could at least see where he was; in this he stood in a sea-encompassed fog, not understanding where he was going, or what he was in search of. Giving the swing-door a dash backwards, as though he had just entered, he went into the room. Mr. Brown was at his desk, Roland Yorke at his; but the other two were absent. So if the visit had been intended as a special one to Josiah Hurst, it was a decided failure.