The lovers looked at one another and sighed. The terms were hard, but not so hard as Sir John might have made them. Still both the boy and the girl--they were little else--recognized that their duty was to the dead. Afterwards pleasure would be theirs. Silently they accepted and silently adjusted the situation. "We agree!" said the two almost simultaneously. "Very good," said Moon, rubbing his hands, "how do you intend to begin your search for the missing woman, Mr. Halliday?" "I don't know," murmured Dan, miserably. "Neither do I," rejoined Sir John with great amiability. "Come to tea?" And to tea the lovers went as to a funeral feast. But Sir John rejoiced. CHAPTER IV AN AMATEUR DETECTIVE Dan left the Mayfair house very mournfully, feeling that Sir John was indeed master of the situation. By a skilful appeal to the generous emotions of youth, to the boy's honor and to the girl's affections, he had procured a respite of twelve months, during which time the lovers could do nothing, bound as they were by silken threads. This would give Curberry time to push his suit, and there was always a chance that Dan would come to grief in one of his aerial trips in which case Lillian would certainly be driven to marry her titled swain. Halliday knew nothing of Moon's reckoning on these points, or he would have only accepted the situation on condition that Curberry was not to meet the girl or write to the girl oftener than himself. Logically speaking, the peer and the commoner should have been placed on the same footing. But Dan's grief at the parting confused his understanding, and he had not been clever enough to seize his opportunity. Therefore Sir John, winning all along the line, had cleared the path for Curberry, and had more or less blocked it for Dan. But, as yet, the young man did not grasp the full extent of Sir John's worldly wisdom. What Halliday had to do--and this dominated his mind immediately he left the house--was to solve the mystery of Sir Charles's death. The sooner he captured the false Mrs. Brown, who, presumably, had murdered the old man, the sooner would he lead Lillian to the altar. Therefore he was feverishly anxious to begin, but for the life of him he did not see how to make a start. He had absolutely no experience of what constituted the business of a detective, and was daunted at the outset by the difficulties of the path. All the same he never thought of halting, but pressed forward without a pause. And the first step he took was to consult a friend, on the obvious assumption that two heads are better than one.