“I am going to Beardmore’s river property to make a search. I have an idea that Brabazon may be hiding there!… After lunch; all right. Will you be here at half-past two?” Thalia Drummond listened and made a shorthand note on her blotting-pad. At half-past two Parr called. She did not see him, for there was a direct entrance to Yale’s room from the corridor without, but she heard the rumble of his voice, and presently they went out. She waited until their footsteps had died away, then she took a telegraph form, and addressing it to Johnson, 23, Mildred Street, City, she wrote: “_Derrick Yale has gone to search Beardmore’s riverside house._” Thalia Drummond was nothing if not dutiful. * * * * The house stood upon a little wharf, and was a picture of desolation and neglect. The stone foundation of the wharf was in decay, the parapet broken, the yard a wilderness of weed; rank grasses and nettles formed almost an impenetrable barrier to their progress after they had opened the gate which led from the mean east-end street in which the wharfage was cited. The house itself might at one time have been picturesque, but now, with its broken lower windows, its weather-stained woodwork and discoloured walls, it was a pitiable piece of architectural wreckage. At one end was a big, gaunt, stone store, built flush with the wharf’s edge, and apparently communicating with the house. An air-raid during the war had demolished one corner of the wall, and robbed it of a few slates which remained, leaving the skeleton of rotting roof ribs nakedly bare to inspection. “A cheerful place,” said Yale, as he opened the door. “It is not the sort of setting in which one could imagine the elegant Brabazon, is it?” The passage-way was dusty. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and the house was silent and lifeless. They made a rapid tour through the rooms, without, however, discovering any sign of the fugitive. “There is a garret here,” said Yale, pointing to a flight of steps that led to a trap-door in the ceiling of the upper floor. He ran up the steps, pushed open the flap and disappeared. Parr heard him walking along and presently he came down. “Nothing there,” he said as he slammed the trap-door in its place. “I never expected that you would find anything,” said Parr as he led the way out of the house. They crossed the weed-grown path to the outer gate, and from a garret window a white-faced man watched them through the dusty glass; a man with a week’s growth of beard, whom even his most intimate friends would never have recognised as Mr. Brabazon, the well-known banker. Chapter XXII. The Messenger of The Circle “You’re a fool, sir, and an idiot. I thought you were a clever detective, but you’re a fool!” Mr. Froyant was in his most savage mood, and the neat stack of bank-notes which stood upon his desk supplied the reason.