I was not in the mood to enjoy a joke of this kind--my position was far too serious--and I left Chelsea in a depressed condition. Perhaps it was being so personally concerned in the matter which made me especially critical of Quarles's methods, but it certainly did not seem to me that his arguments had helped me in the least. They only served to emphasize how poor our chance was of finding the criminal. Next afternoon I received a wire from the professor telling me to meet him at the Yorkshire Grey. I found him waiting there and thought he looked a little anxious. "We are going to have a tea-party at a quiet place round the corner in Gray's Inn Road," he said; "at least Cockran and I are, while you are going to look on. You are going to be conspicuous by your absence, and under no circumstances must you attempt to join us. When it is all over and we have gone, then you can leave your hiding-place and come to Chelsea." He would answer no questions as we went to the third-rate tea-rooms, but he was certainly excited. The woman greeted him as an old friend. He had evidently been there before. "This is the gentleman I spoke of," said Quarles, and then the woman led us into a back room. "Ah, you've put the screen in that corner, I see. An excellent arrangement; couldn't be better. You quite understand that this room is reserved for me and my guests for as long as I may require it. Good. Now, Wigan, your place is behind this screen. There is a chair, so you can be seated, and there is also a convenient hole in the screen which will afford you a view of our table yonder. It is rather a theatrical arrangement, but I have a score to settle with Cockran if I can. He thinks I am an old fool, and when it does not suit my purpose I object to any one having that idea." When Cockran arrived it so happened that I had some little difficulty in finding the slit in the screen; when I did I saw that he had a woman with him. By the time I had got a view of the room she had seated herself at the tea-table and her back was toward me. It did not seem to me the kind of back that would make a man hurry to overtake to see what the face was like. Quarles talked commonplaces while the tea was being brought in, and then, when the proprietress had gone out, he said, leaning toward the woman: "Do you constantly suffer from the result of your accident?" "Accident!" she repeated. "I notice that you limp slightly." "Oh, it was a long time ago. I don't feel anything of it now." Quarles handed her some cake. "It is very good of you to come," he went on, "and I hope you are going to let us persuade you to be definite." She nodded at Cockran. "I have told him that I am not sure. I am going to stick to that." "The fact is, we are especially anxious to solve this mystery," Quarles went on, "and I believe you are the only person who can help us. Now, from certain inquiries which I have been making I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Parrish is not dead."