“That is because your father has not the same experience,” said the detective, “but I understand that he saw Chief Inspector Parr, and the inspector thought there was considerable danger.” Jack chuckled in spite of his fears. “How do the lion and the lamb amalgamate?” he asked. “I didn’t think that head-quarters had much use for private men like you, Mr. Yale?” “I admire Parr,” said Derrick slowly. “He’s slow, but thorough. I am told that he is one of the most conscientious men at head-quarters, and I fancy that the head-quarters chiefs have treated him badly over the last Crimson Circle crime. They have practically told him that if he cannot run the organisation to earth he must send in his resignation.” Whilst they were speaking, the figure of Mr. Beardmore had disappeared into the gloom of a little wood on the edge of the estate. “I worked with him during the last Circle murder,” Derrick Yale went on, “and he struck me----” He stopped, and the two men looked at one another. There was no mistaking the sound. It was a shot near and distinct, and it came from the direction of the wood. In an instant Jack had leapt over the balustrade and was racing across the meadow, Derrick Yale behind him. Twenty paces along the woodland path they found Jim Beardmore lying on his face, and he was quite dead, and even as Jack was staring down at his father with horrified eyes, a girl emerged from the wood at the farther end, and stopping only long enough to wipe with a handful of grass something that was red from her hands, she flew along the shadow of the hedge which divided the Froyant estate. Never once did Thalia Drummond look back until she reached the shelter of the little summer house. Her face was drawn and white, and her breath came gaspingly as she stood for a second in the doorway of the little hut, and looked back to the wood. A swift glance round and she was in the house and on her knees tugging with quivering hands at the end of a floor board. It came up disclosing a black cavity. Another second’s hesitation, and she threw into the hole the revolver she had held in her hand, and dropped the board back into its place. Chapter VI. “Thalia Drummond is a Crook” The Commissioner looked down at the newspaper cutting before him and tugged at his grey moustache. Inspector Parr, who knew the signs, watched with an apparently detached interest. He was a short, thick-set man, so lacking in inches that it was remarkable that he had ever satisfied the stringent requirements of the police authorities. His age was something below fifty, but his big red face was unlined. It was a face from whence every indication of intelligence and refinement was absent. The round, staring eyes were bovine in their lack of expression, the big fleshy nose, the heavy cheeks, pouched beneath the jaws, and the half-bald head, were units of his unimpressiveness. The Commissioner picked up the cutting.