“It was Brabazon’s intention to bolt on the day following Marl’s murder, and with that object he had cleared out the whole of Marl’s balance and had made preparations for flight. On Marl’s death suspicion naturally fell upon him and, intimated by the Crimson Circle that he was in danger, he hurried off to the riverside house which we searched.” Detective-Inspector Parr chuckled. “When I say ‘we searched it,’ I mean Yale searched it. In other words, he went into the room where he knew Brabazon was, and came down reporting that all was clear.” “There is one point I’d like you to clear up--the chloroforming of Yale in his office,” said the Prime Minister. “That was clever, and deceived me for a moment. Yale handcuffed, strapped and chloroformed himself after he had put the money in an envelope and dropped it down the letter-chute--it was addressed to his private residence. Do you remember, sir, that the postman left the building, having cleared the box, a few minutes after the ‘outrage’? Unfortunately for Yale, I had let Thalia into the room and put her into the cupboard, where she witnessed the whole comedy and retrieved the chloroform bottle which he had put into a drawer of his desk.” “The last victim, Mr. Raphael Willings,” here Parr spoke very clearly and deliberately, “owes his life to the fact that he conceived an unhealthy attachment for my daughter. She was struggling with him, when, looking over her shoulder, she saw a hand come from behind the curtain holding the very knife that had been stolen earlier in the day by Yale (again in his capacity as detective). It was aimed at Mr. Willings’s heart, but by a superhuman effort, she thrust him aside, but not so far as to save him completely. Yale, of course, was on hand to discover the outrage (I should imagine he was very annoyed when he found it was not a murder), and of course he had no difficulty in fixing it upon mother--upon Thalia Drummond Parr. “Consider the cleverness of his operations!” said Parr admiringly. “He had thrust himself into the front rank of private detectives, so that he was on hand to receive information which was invaluable to him as the Crimson Circle. He was eventually taken to police head-quarters--at my suggestion--where the most important documents came under his notice. Some of them were not quite as important as he thought, but it saved Mr. Beardmore’s life when Yale had the first handling of a photograph of himself taken a few moments before the abortive execution.