She followed him down the stairs and into his library. She had spoken the truth. The door of the safe hung drunkenly upon its hinges. A hole had been cut through the shutter and it was open. The contents of the safe lay upon the floor; the drawers of his desk had been forced open and apparently a search had been made amongst the papers on the desk. Even the waste-paper basket had been turned out and searched. “I can’t understand it,” he muttered. He was pulling the heavy curtains across the window. “You will understand better, though I hope you do not understand too well,” she said grimly. “Now, please take a sheet of paper and write as I dictate.” “To whom must I write?” he asked in surprise. “Inspector Parr,” she said. “Say ‘_Dear Inspector.--Here is the photograph which my father received the day before his death. I have not opened it, but perhaps it may interest you._’” Meekly he wrote as she ordered and signed the letter, which, with the photograph, she put into a large envelope. “And now address it,” she said. “And write on it on the top left-hand corner, ‘From John Beardmore,’ and put after that ‘Photograph, very urgent.’” With the envelope in her hand she walked to the door. “I shall see you to-morrow, Mr. Beardmore, if you are alive.” He would have laughed, but there was something in her drawn face, some message in her quivering lips, that checked the laughter on his. Chapter XXXVIII. The Arrest of Thalia It was the seventh day following the meeting of the Cabinet, and, so far from agreeing with the terms of the Crimson Circle, the Government had made it known, in the most unmistakable terms, that it refused to deal with the Circle or its emissaries. That afternoon Mr. Raphael Willings prepared for a visitor. His house in Onslow Gardens was one of the show places of the country. His collection of antique armour and swords, his priceless intaglios and his rare prints were without equal in the world. But he had no thought of his visitor’s antiquarian interests when he made his preparations, and he was less deterred than stimulated by a confidential document which had come to him, intimating in plain language the character which Thalia Drummond bore. Thief she might be--well, she could take any sword in the armoury, any print on the wall, the rarest intaglio among his show cases, so long as she was pleasant and complacent. When Thalia came she was admitted by a foreign-looking footman and remembered that Raphael Willings had only Italian servants in the house. Warily she surveyed the room into which she was ushered. There were open windows at each end--which surprised her. She had expected to find a little tête-à-tête tea table. That was missing, and yet in this room was the cream of his collection, as she could see at a glance. Willings came in a few seconds later, and greeted her warmly. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die; perhaps to-day,” he said melodramatically. “Have you heard the news?”