“I don’t know,” he said. “Criticism never did anybody any harm; it is only when a man knows he is wrong that this kind of stuff irritates him. As I happen to know I am right, it doesn’t matter to me what they say.” “You really think you are right? In what respect?” asked Jack curiously, but here Parr was not offering any information. They arrived at the little station and drove the three miles which separated the line from the big gaunt house which had been James Beardmore’s delight. Jack’s butler, who had come down to superintend arrangements for his master’s comfort, handed a telegram to Inspector Parr almost as soon as he put his foot across the threshold. Parr looked at the face of the envelope and then at the back. “How long has this been here?” “It arrived about five minutes ago; a cyclist messenger brought it up from the village,” he said. The inspector tore open the envelope and extracted the form. It was signed “Derrick Yale,” and read: “_Come back to London at once; most important development._” Without a word he handed the message to the young man. “Of course you’ll go. It’s rather a nuisance; there isn’t a train until nine o’clock,” said Jack, who was disappointed at the prospect of losing his companion. “I’m not going,” said Parr calmly. “Nothing in the wide world would make me take another train journey to-night. It must wait.” This attitude toward the summons did not somehow go with Jack’s perception of the inspector’s character. He was, if the truth be told, secretly disappointed, although he was glad enough that Parr would share his first night in the house, every corner, every room of which, seemed to have its own especial ghost. Parr looked at the telegram again. “He must have sent this within half-an-hour of our leaving the station,” he said. “You have a telephone, haven’t you?” Jack nodded, and Parr put through a long distance call. It was a quarter of an hour before the tinkle of the bell announced that he had been connected. Jack heard his voice in the hall, and presently the detective came in. “As I thought,” he said, “the wire was a fake. I’ve just been on to friend Yale.” “And did you guess it was a fake?” Mr. Parr nodded. “I’m getting almost as good a guesser as Yale,” said the detective good-humouredly. He spent the evening initiating the young man into the mysteries of picquet, of which Parr was a past-master. There is probably no more fascinating card game for two in the world than this, and so pleasantly was the evening passed, that it was with a shock that Jack looked at the clock and found it was midnight. The room to which the inspector was shown was that which had been occupied by James Beardmore in his lifetime. It was a roomy apartment, lofty and expansive. There were three long windows, and at night the room, as the rest of the house, was lighted by means of an acetylene-gas plant which James Beardmore had installed.