And Phillida turned her back towards the shiny statue, and looked over the wet parapet, almost expecting to see something, but never dreaming of what she actually saw. The tide, which must have been coming in that early morning, was now going out, and between the Embankment masonry and the river there was again a draggled ribbon of shelving foreshore, black as on some volcanic coast; and between land and water, at a point that would necessarily have been submerged for the last eight or nine hours, a small object was being laid more bare by every receding wavelet. It was black and square, perhaps the size of two large cigar-boxes side by side; and it had one long, thin, reddish tentacle, finishing in a bulb that moved about gently in the rain-pocked water. Phillida felt the parapet strike cold and wet through her rain-coat sleeves as she leant far over to make doubly sure what she object was; but indeed she had not a moment’s doubt but that it was the missing camera of the murdered man. CHAPTER XXI. AFTER THE FAIR Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had happened to him except a fairly recent shave. “I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two were closeted. “Do you ever read your paper?” “I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.” “Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.” “_You_ did, Thrush?” “Why not? I had need of the fellow, and that part of the game was up.” Mr. Upton showed symptoms of his old irritability under the Thrush mannerism. “My good fellow, I wish to goodness you’d explain yourself!” “If I cared to be profane,” returned Thrush, mixing drinks in the corner, “I should refer you to the first chapter of the Book of Job. I provided the prisoner, and I’d a perfect right to take him away again. Blessed be the song of the Thrush!” “You say you provided him?” “In other words, I laid the information against my own man, but only with his own consent.” “Well, well, you must have your joke, I suppose. I can afford to put up with it now.” “It wasn’t meant as a joke,” returned Thrush, and drank deep while his client sipped. “If it had come off it would have been the coup of my career; as it didn’t—quite—one must laugh it off at one’s own expense. Your son has told you what that poor old sinner made him think he’d done?” “Of course.” “Would it surprise you to hear that one or two others thought the same thing?” “Not you, Thrush?” “Not I to quite the same positive extent as my rascal Mullins. He jumped to it from scratch!” “He connected Tony with the Park murder?” “From the word ‘go.’ ” “On the strength of an asthma cigarette and my poor wife’s dream?”