Joyce deliberated profoundly as he walked away from the 'Jolly Tar' that night. "He's too deep to be caught easily," he thought. "He'll let me into his house, because he knows there's nothing I can find out, watch as I may. Such a murder as that leaves no trace behind it. If I had been able to get hold of the girl, I might have frightened her into telling me something; but it's clear to me she has really bolted, or Wayman would never let me into his house." For weeks Joyce Harker was a lodger at the 'Jolly Tar'; always on the watch; always ready to seize upon the smallest clue to the mystery of Valentine Jernam's death; but nothing came of his watching. The police did their best to discover the key to the dreadful secret; but they worked in vain. The dead man's money had been partly in notes and gold, partly in bills of exchange. It was easy enough to dispose of such bills in the City. There were men ready to take them at a certain price, and to send them abroad; men who never ask questions of their customers. So there was little chance of any light being thrown on this dark and evil mystery. Joyce watched and waited with dog-like fidelity, ready to seize upon the faintest clue; but he waited and watched in vain. * * * * * CHAPTER III. DISINHERITED. Nearly a year had elapsed since the murder of Valentine Jernam, and the March winds were blowing amongst the leafless branches of the trees in the Green Park. In the library of one of the finest houses in Arlington Street, a gentleman paced restlessly to and fro, stopping before one of the windows every now and then, to look, with a fretful glance, at the dull sky. "What weather!" he muttered: "what execrable weather!" The speaker was a man of some fifty years of age--a man who had been very handsome and who was handsome still--a man with a haughty patrician countenance--not easily forgotten by those who looked upon it. Sir Oswald Eversleigh, Baronet, was a descendant of one of the oldest families in Yorkshire. He was the owner of Raynham Castle, in Yorkshire; Eversleigh Manor, in Lincolnshire; and his property in those two counties constituted a rent-roll of forty thousand per annum. He was a bachelor, and having nearly reached his fiftieth year it was considered unlikely that he would marry. Such at least was the fixed idea of those who considered themselves the likely inheritors of the baronet's wealth. The chief of these was Reginald Eversleigh, his favourite nephew, the only son of a younger brother, who had fallen gloriously on an Indian battle-field.