"Not at all!" replied Byner. "Much too soon! All I want is--detective help of the strictly professional kind. No--we'll give Mr. Pratt a little more rope yet--for another four-and-twenty-hours, say. But--it'll come! Now, who is the best local detective--a quiet, steady fellow who knows how to do his work unobtrusively?" "Prydale's the man!" said Eldrick "Detective-Sergeant Prydale--I've had reason to employ him, more than once. I'll give you a note to him, and one to Superintendent Waterson." He went over to a writing-table and scribbled a few lines on half-sheets of notepaper which he enclosed in envelopes and handed to Byner. "I don't know what line you're taking," he said, "nor where it's going to end--exactly. But I do know this--Pratt never turned a hair when I let out all that to him." But if Eldrick went away from his old clerk's fine new offices thinking that Pratt was quite unperturbed and unmoved by the news he had just acquired, he was utterly mistaken. Pratt was very much perturbed, deeply moved, not a little frightened. He had so schooled himself to keep a straight and ever blank expression of countenance in any sudden change of events that he had shown nothing to Eldrick--but he was none the less upset by the solicitor's last announcement. Twenty thousand pounds was lying to be picked up by Parrawhite--or by Parrawhite's next-of-kin! What an unhappy turn of fortune! For the next-of-kin would never rest until either Parrawhite came to light, or it was satisfactorily established that he was dead--and if search begun to be made in Barford, where might not that search end? Unmoved?--cool?--if Eldrick had turned back, he would have found that Pratt had suddenly given way to a fit of nerves. But that soon passed, and Pratt began to think. He left his office early, and betook himself to his favourite gymnasium. Exercise did him good--he thought a lot while he was exercising. And once more, instead of going home to dinner, he dined in town, and he sat late over his dinner in a snug corner of the restaurant, and he thought and planned and schemed--and after twilight had fallen on Barford, he went out and made his way to Peel Row. He must see Murgatroyd again--at once. Half-way along Peel Row, Pratt stopped, suddenly--and with sudden fear. Out of a side street emerged a man, a quiet ordinary-looking man whom he knew very well indeed--Detective-Sergeant Prydale. He was accompanied by a smart-looking, much younger man, whom Pratt remembered to have seen in Beck Street that afternoon--a stranger to him and to Barford. And as he watched, these two covered the narrow roadway, and walked into Murgatroyd's shop. CHAPTER XXIV THE BETTER HALF