“The prisoner sat on his bed. Mr. Parr was sitting facing him and Mr. Yale was standing with his back to the cell door, which was open when I went in. I took a tin mug half full of water which I drew from a faucet which had been fixed for the purpose of supplying drinking water. I remember putting the tin down whilst I attended a bell call from another cell. So far as I know it was impossible that this tin could be tampered with, though it is true that the door into the yard was open. When I went into the cell Mr. Parr took the tin from my hand, and set it on a ledge near the door and told me not to interrupt them.” “You notice that no reference is made to the shorthand-writer. Was he obtained locally, do you think?” “I’m almost sure he was from your office.” “I must ask Parr about that,” said the Commissioner. Mr. Parr (who had returned from France) when questioned on the telephone, admitted that the shorthand-writer was a local man whom he had secured by making enquiries in the little town. In the confusion which had followed the discovery that Sibly was dead, he had not thought to enquire about the man’s identity. A typewritten transcript of Sibly’s statement had been given to him, and he remembered indistinctly paying the writer for his trouble. That was as far as he could help the Commissioner, whose information on the subject was not greatly increased. Derrick Yale waited whilst this telephonic communication was in progress, and when the colonel had finished, he gathered from his dissatisfied expression that Parr’s information was of no particular value. “You don’t remember the man yourself?” Yale shook his head. “His back was to me, most of the time,” he said, “and he sat by the side of Parr.” The Commissioner muttered something about gross carelessness, and then: “I shouldn’t be surprised if your shorthand-writer was an emissary of the Crimson Circle,” he said. “It was a piece of criminal neglect to have taken a man whose identity cannot be established for such an important piece of work. Yes, Parr has failed.” He sighed. “I am sorry, in many ways. I like Parr. Of course, he’s one of the old-fashioned police officers whom you bright outside men affect to despise, and he hasn’t any extraordinary gifts, although he has been, in his time, a remarkably good officer. But he’ll have to go. That is decided. I may tell you this, because I have already made the same intimation to Parr himself. It is a thousand pities.” It was no news to Yale: nor was it news to the youngest officer at police head-quarters. But the person who seemed least concerned was Inspector Parr himself. He went about his routine work as though unconscious that any extraordinary change in his position was contemplated, and even when he met his successor, who came to look at the office he was shortly to occupy, was geniality itself.