She put out her hand to Johnson, Elk she favoured with a distant inclination of her head, and was gone, leaving the three men looking after her. Two, for when Mr. Elk looked around, the boy had disappeared into the building. “You know Miss Bennett?” “Slightly,” said Elk grudgingly. “I know almost everybody slightly. Good people and bad people. The gooder they are, the slighter I know ’em. Queer devil.” “Who?” asked the startled Johnson. “You mean her father? I wish he wasn’t so chilly with me.” Elk’s lips twitched. “I guess you do,” he said drily. “So long.” He strolled aimlessly away as Johnson walked up the steps into Maitlands, but he did not go far. Crossing the road, he retraced his steps and took up his station in the doorway. At four o’clock a taxicab drew up before the imposing door of Maitlands Consolidated, and a few minutes later the old man shuffled out, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Elk regarded him with more than ordinary interest. He knew the financier by sight, and had paid two or three visits to the office in connection with certain petty thefts committed by cleaners. In this way he had become acquainted with Philo Johnson, for old Maitland had delegated the interview to his subordinate. Elk judged the old man to be in the region of seventy, and wondered for the first time where he lived, and in what state. Had he relations? It was a curious fact that he knew nothing whatever about the financier, the least paragraphed of any of the big City forces. The detective had no business with the head of this flourishing firm. His task was to discover the association between Lola Bassano and this impecunious clerk. He knew inside him that Dick Gordon’s interest in the young man was not altogether disinterested, and suspected rightly that the pretty sister of Ray Bennett lay behind it. But the itch for knowledge about Maitland, suddenly aroused by the realization that the old man’s home life was an unknown quantity, was too strong to be resisted. As the taxicab moved off, Elk beckoned another. “Follow that cab,” he said, and the driver nodded his agreement without question, for there was no taximan on the streets who did not know this melancholy policeman. The first of the cabs drove rapidly in the direction of North London, and halted at a busy junction of streets in Finsbury Park. This is a part of the town which great financiers do not as a rule choose for their habitations. It is a working-class district, full of small houses, usually occupied by two or more families; and when the cab stopped and the old man nimbly descended, Elk’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ of surprise. Maitland did not pay the cabman, but hurried round the corner into the busy thoroughfare, with Elk at his heels. He walked a hundred yards, and then boarded a street car. Elk sprinted, and swung himself on board as the car was moving. The old man found a seat, took a battered newspaper from his pocket, and began reading.