"He could not recognise me," said Mr. St. Henry, "I don't suppose he ever saw me to notice me. Each time that he called on Blair, it happened that I was in the front office with the clerks when he passed through it. He was not likely to have observed me." "You have not spoken to him, then?" "Not I." "And--you don't know what his business here may be." "Not at all. Can't guess at it. It concerns neither you nor me, Sir Karl, and therefore I have not scrupled to tell _you_ so much. Of course you will not repeat it again. If he chooses to remain unknown here, and pass himself off for a student of divinity--doubtless for sufficient reasons--I should not be justified in proclaiming that he is a London detective, and so possibly ruin his game." Sir Karl made a motion of acquiescence. His brain was whirling in no measured degree. He connected the presence of this detective at Foxwood with the paragraph that had appeared in the newspaper touching the escaped convict from Portland Island. "Would there--would there be any possibility of getting to know his business?" he dreamily asked. "Not the slightest, I should say, unless he chooses directly to disclose it. Why? You cannot have any interest in it, I presume, Sir Karl, whatever it may be." "No, no; certainly not," replied Sir Karl, awaking to the fact that he was on dangerous ground. "One is apt to get curious on hearing of business connected with detectives," he added, laughing; "as interested as one does in a good novel." "Ay, true," said the lawyer, unsuspiciously. "At Mrs. Jinks's he is lodging, is he?" absently remarked Karl, turning to depart; and inwardly marvelling how he could have caught up the notion that the person there was only a lad, a pupil of Cattacomb's. "At Mrs. Jinks's, Sir Karl; got her drawing-room. Wonder how the Rev. Guy would feel if he knew the man over his head was a cute detective officer?" "I suppose the officer cannot be looking after _him_," jested Sir Karl. "St. Jerome's is the least sound thing we know at Foxwood." The lawyer laughed a hearty laugh as he attended Sir Karl to the door; at which Mr. St. Henry's gig was now waiting to take him into Basham. It was not a hot morning, but Karl Andinnian took off his hat repeatedly on the way home to wipe his brow. The dreadful catastrophe he had been fearing for his unfortunate brother seemed to be drawing ominously near. "But for that confounded Smith, Adam might have been away before," he groaned. "I know he might. Smith----" And there Karl stopped; stopped as though his speech had been suddenly cut off. For a new idea had darted into his mind, and he stayed to ponder it. Was this detective officer down here to look after Philip Salter?--and not after Adam at all?