"No," replied the elder of the two. "We are both agreed, as the Commissioner also believes, that your wife would not be held a prisoner. Criminals do not hold women prisoners nowadays, except in works of fiction. No," he added, "depend upon it, Mr. Holford, when you discover the truth, you will find that your wife was acquainted with one or other of these friends of yours, and that her disappearance was part of a plan." The story of the message received by Mabel while I was in Scotland flashed across my mind. I recollected all that Gwen had so guardedly related to me. But I stirred myself quickly. No, a thousand times no! I would never believe evil of Mabel before I had absolute proof in black and white. The mystery of her disappearance was as great and inexplicable as the problem of who killed Professor Greer? CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. TWO MEN CONSULT. Beside myself with fear and anxiety regarding the woman I loved so well, I again called that very same evening upon Kirk at Whitehall Court, but on doing so was informed by the lift-man that he was out. A suggestion then occurred to me that he might have gone over to his other abode at Bedford Park, therefore I returned, and at last knocked at his door. His sister answered my summons, and saying that her brother was at home, ushered me into his presence. I found him in his old velvet jacket seated in his high-backed arm-chair before a glowing fire, his pet parrot near him; and as I entered he greeted me coldly, without deigning to shake my hand. "Well, Holford," he exclaimed, stretching his slippered feet lazily towards the fire, "so you have, after all, proved a traitor, eh?" "A traitor? How?" I asked, standing near the fireplace and facing him. "You have been telling some extraordinary stories about me at Scotland Yard, I hear," he said with a grin. "Ah!" I cried. "Then you are a detective, after all? My surmise was right from the first!" "No," he replied very quietly, "you were quite wrong, my dear sir; I'm not a detective, neither professional nor amateur, nor have I anything whatever to do with Scotland Yard. They may be sad blunderers there, but they do not accept every cock-and-bull story that may be told them." "I told them no cock-and-bull story!" I protested angrily. "I told them the actual truth!" "And that after all the warnings I have given you!" he said in a tone of bitterest reproach. "Ah! you are unaware of the extreme gravity of that act of yours. You have broken faith with me, Holford, and by doing so, have, I fear, brought upon me, as upon others, a great calamity." "But you are so mysterious. You have never been open and above-board with me!" I declared. "You are full of mystery." "Did I not tell you on the first evening you sat here with me that I was a dealer in secrets?" he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his cigar.