She thanked him very sweetly. “I have a notion I shall never see him again,” she said. “But one never knows. He has made a good deal of money, but he is a very greedy man. He is very frightened just now, but his fear may pass away, and he will want to further enrich himself by the same old means. In that case, he would seek me out with the object of compelling me to help him. In that case, I should be glad to come to you in the hope that you could terrify him again.” “What are your intentions as regards the future?” asked the detective presently. “It would hardly be safe for you to go abroad, would it? You would be pretty certain to run across him some day.” “Yes, I would prefer living on the Continent, but I dare not run the risk of falling in with him again. After the design upon Lord Wraysbury miscarried, thanks to your intervention, and both Whitehouse and Edwards judged it prudent to clear out, I telegraphed to my mother to come over from Rouen, where she was living quietly. We talked over matters very thoroughly, and we made up our minds that we would hide ourselves in some corner of England under an assumed name.” Grewgus could not help smiling at this last remark. This fascinating young woman had gone under so many different names, that the adoption of another alias would come very naturally to her. “I understand, then, that you propose for the future to go straight.” “Most certainly,” was the reply given in a tone that showed absolute sincerity. “Through you, the particular coterie to which I belonged has been practically dispersed. Howard Stormont, for whom I had something like a feeling of affection for his kindness to me, took his own way out of it; he was a thriftless, improvident man and he saw ruin staring him in the face. Whitehouse was altogether different. He was careful, not to say parsimonious. By now he must have saved a great deal of money, and I know it was his intention to give up the life as soon as he had amassed enough to live on. I think he was only waiting for the Wraysbury _coup_ to come off to execute that intention. Its failure has made him forestall it.” “You know where he is at the present moment, of course?” asked Grewgus. “No, I do not,” was the emphatic answer, and the detective believed that it was a truthful one. “When we talked the matter over, we both agreed that it was best we should know nothing of each other’s movements. I suppose we had both lived in such an atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy, that he did not care to trust me; I was equally disinclined to trust him.” “Why did he carry on that solicitor’s business? He had no genuine business, had he?”