'I asked the Policeman who the gentleman was. He said it was Mr. Edmund Gray. I asked the newspaper boy at the Holborn entrance. He said it was Mr. Edmund Gray, and that everybody knew him.' 'So everybody knows him. Well, Checkley, I see nothing so very remarkable about your seeing a man so well known in the Inn. It adds nothing to our knowledge. That he exists, we know already. What share, if any, he has had in this case of ours remains still a mystery. Unless, that is, you have found out something else.' Checkley gazed upon his master with a kind of stupor. 'No--no,' he murmured. 'I can't.' 'What did you do, when you found out that it was the man?' 'Nothing.' 'You did nothing. Well--under the circumstances I don't know what you could have done.' 'And he walked away.' 'Oh! He walked away. Very important indeed.--But, Checkley, this story does not in the least account for your strange agitation this morning. Have you anything more to tell me? I see that you have, but you seem to experience more than usual difficulty in getting it out.' The clerk hesitated. 'Do you,' he asked at last--'do you--happen--to know Gray's Inn?' 'I daresay I have been there--years ago. Why?' 'Oh! you haven't been there lately, have you?' 'Not lately--not for forty years, or some such inconsiderable period. Why?' 'I thought you might yourself have met Mr. Edmund Gray--been to his Chambers, perhaps.' Mr. Dering sat upright and laid his hand upon his letters. 'Checkley,' he said, 'I am always willing to make allowance for people in mental distress, but I think I have made allowance enough. Come to the point. Have you lost any money?' 'No--no; not so bad as that--but bad enough. No, I couldn't afford to lose money. I haven't got enough to spare any. But I got a shock--a kind of stroke--partly because of the man I met, and partly because of the person with him.' 'Oh! who was that? Are we arriving at something?' 'I hadn't told you that. The person who was sitting at the open window with him, who came down-stairs with him, and walked out of the Square with him, was no other than your own ward, Miss Elsie Arundel herself!' 'Oh! why not?' asked Mr. Dering carelessly. 'She told me yesterday, was it? that she knows him.' 'If it had been anyone else she was with,' he replied, mixing up his grammar--'if it had been anyone else who was with her--I wouldn't have been surprised! But to see the two together. That gave me a turn that I can't get over.' 'Still--why not? Miss Elsie Arundel has already told me that she is acquainted with Mr. Edmund Gray.' 'What? She has told you--she has actually told you? Oh! what has she told you? Oh! Lord! Lord! What is a man to say or to do? She told you--what is best to do?' He wrung his hands in his distress and his perplexity.