"At present--yes," replied Eldrick. "And while I'm making it--I'll do it myself--we'll just go on outwardly--as if nothing had happened. If I meet Pratt--as I shall--I shall not let him see that I know anything. Do you go on in just the usual way. Go out to Normandale Grange now and then--and tell Miss Mallathorpe to think no more of her interview with Pratt until we've something to talk to her about. You talk to her about--something else." When Collingwood had left him Eldrick laid a telegram form on his plotting pad, and after a brief interval of thought wrote out a message addressed to the people whose advertisement had attracted Pascoe's attention. "HALSTEAD & BYNER, 56B, St. Martin's Chambers, London, W.C. "I can give you definite information concerning James Parrawhite if you will send representative to see me personally. "CHARLES ELDRICK, Eldrick & Pascoe, Solicitors, Barford." After Eldrick had sent off a clerk with this message to the nearest telegraph office, he sat thinking for some time. And at the close of his meditations, and after some turning over of a diary which lay on his desk, he picked up pen and paper, and drafted an advertisement of his own. "TEN POUNDS REWARD will be paid to any person who can give reliable and useful information as to James Parrawhite, who until November last was a clerk in the employ of Messrs. Eldrick & Pascoe, Solicitors, Barford, and who is believed to have left the town on the evening of November 23.--Apply to Mr. CHARLES ELDRICK, of the above firm." "Worth risking ten pounds on--anyway," muttered Eldrick. "Whether these London people will cover it or not. Here!" he went on, turning to a clerk who had just entered the room. "Make three copies of this advertisement, and take one to each of the three newspaper offices, and tell 'em to put it in their personal column tonight." He sat musing for some time after he was left alone again, and when he at last rose, it was with a shake of the head. "I wonder if Pratt told me the truth that morning?" he said to himself. "Anyway, he's now being proved to be even deeper than I'd ever considered him. Well--other folk than Pratt are possessed of pretty good wits." Before he left the office that evening Eldrick was handed a telegram from Messrs. Halstead & Byner, of St. Martin's Chambers, informing him that their Mr. Byner would travel to Barford by the first express next morning, and would call upon him at eleven o'clock. "Then they have some important news for Parrawhite," mused Eldrick, as he put the message in his pocket and went off to his club. "Inquiry agents don't set off on long journeys at a moment's notice for a matter of a trifling agency. But--where is Parrawhite?"