"I wonder what happened," he said again. "Well, that can wait. Now just tell me exactly how matters stand in regard to you and Punsonby's." "I have all the figures here," said Mr. White, as he thrust his hand into the inside pocket of his frock-coat, "I can raise L40,000 by debentures and--hello, what's this?" He drew from his pocket a white packet, fastened about by a rubber band. This he slipped off and gasped, for in his hands were three registered letters, and they were addressed to Messrs. Punsonby, and each had been slit open. CHAPTER V THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD No. 342, Lothbury, is a block of business offices somewhat unpretentious in their approach but of surprising depth and importance when explored. Oliva Cresswell stood for awhile in the great lobby, inspecting the names of the occupants, which were inscribed on porcelain slips in two big frames on each wall of the vestibule. After a lengthy search she discovered the name of the Beale Agency under the heading "fourth floor" and made her way to the elevator. Mr. Beale's office was at the end of a seemingly interminable corridor and consisted, as she was to find, of an outer and an inner chamber. The outer was simply furnished with a table, two chairs and a railed fence bisected with a little wooden gateway. A boy sat at one table, engaged in laborious exercise on a typewriter with one finger of one hand. He jumped up as she came through the door. "Miss Cresswell?" he asked. "Mr. Beale will see you." He opened the wicket-gate and led the way to a door marked "Private." It was Beale who opened the door in response to the knock. "Come in, Miss Cresswell," he said cheerily, "I didn't expect you for half an hour." "I thought I'd start well," she smiled. She had had many misgivings that morning, and had spent a restless night debating the wisdom of engaging herself to an employer whose known weakness had made his name a by-word. But a promise was a promise and, after all, she told herself, her promise was fulfilled when she had given the new work a trial. "Here is your desk," he said, indicating a large office table in the centre of the room, "and here is my little library. You will note that it mainly consists of agricultural returns and reports--do you read French?" She nodded. "Good, and Spanish--that's rather too much to expect, isn't it?" "I speak and read Spanish very well," she said. "When I was a little girl I lived around in Paris, Lyons, and Barcelona--my first regular work--the first I was paid for--was in the Anglo-Spanish Cable office in Barcelona."