Immediately on his return, Trafford sought an interview with Mrs. Parlin. The time was coming when the inquest must be reconvened, and as yet there was nothing of advance since the hour when it had adjourned. Even he was grown impatient and he could not marvel that a woman, under the nervous strain of his employer, should be fast becoming irritably so. “We have no right,” she said, “to leave an innocent man under suspicion as Jonathan has been left. If we can’t find the murderer, we can at least prove that it isn’t he.” “Unfortunately, until we find the man, the majority will believe him guilty,” Trafford replied. “What right had you to throw suspicion on him?” she demanded. “The right of the coroner to know every fact that bears on the case. It would have been as unjustifiable to conceal Oldbeg’s purchase of a revolver, as it would to conceal the finding of the weapon.” “Why wasn’t it there the morning of the eleventh?” she asked. “My dear madam,” he said with a gentle smile, “if we knew that, we’d know who the murderer is. We’d know it, that is: but possibly not in a way that we could prove.” “Precious little good that would do us,” she answered. “So much good that the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that the proof would be forthcoming. There are few men who are shrewd enough to cover every trace.” “But these seem to be of the few,” she said. “We are not through with them yet,” he replied; and then suddenly: “Has the new detective, employed by Hunter and his friends, been here?” He had, and had made a critical examination of the house from cellar to attic; had been through the papers in the desk and safe, and had taken away a number of scraps from the former. “He didn’t get the writing-pad, though,” he said. “No; that disturbed him; especially when I told him you had it.” “The--deuce you did!” he exclaimed. “I wish--you hadn’t!” “I had no right to conceal so important a fact,” she said. Trafford bit his lip over this turn of his own argument, but made no retort. He recognised in this second detective a graver impediment than the cunning of the criminal--if, indeed, it was not the cunning of the criminal that had interjected the second detective into the affair. Working independently, it was scarcely possible that they could do otherwise than thwart each other. He had the feeling that the case was his and that no other had a professional right to throw himself into it. If he had been on the verge of success, he would have withdrawn from the case. As it was, the same professional pride that resented intrusion, forbade his taking such a course. For the twentieth time he asked: “He certainly did a large amount of work at home and must have had papers connected with the work here?” “Why, certainly,” she said. “He always had a lot of professional papers here.”