There are in most cities, and connected with many detective forces, and more individual members of forces, a class of men, mongrels, we might say,—a cross between the lawyer and the detective but actually neither, and sometimes fitted for both. They are called, by those initiated, “private enquirers,” “trackers,” “bloodhounds.”
These gentry are often employed by lawyers, as well as by detectives and the police. They trace out titles, run down witnesses, hunt up pedigrees, unearth long-forgotten family secrets. They are searchers of records, burrowers into the past. Their work is slow, laborious, pains-taking, tedious. But it is not dangerous; the unsafe tracks are left to the detective proper.
Into the careful hands of some of these gentry, Van Vernet had entrusted certain threads from the woof of the “Arthur Pearson murder case,” as they styled it. And these tireless searchers were burrowing away while Vernet was busying himself with other matters, waiting for the time when the “tracker” should find his occupation gone, and the detective’s efforts be called in play.
Vernet had not been aware of the close proximity of his sometime friend and present rival. He had felt sure, from the first, that the pretended mute was other than he seemed; that he was a spy and marplot. But Richard Stanhope’s disguise was perfect, and Vernet had not scrutinized him closely, being in such haste to dispose of him, and expecting to investigate his case later. Then, too, Richard Stanhope was absent; he had not been seen, or heard of, at the Agency for many days.
As for Stanhope, he had not been slow to recognize Van Vernet, and if he had not succeeded in all that he had hoped to accomplish, he had at least discovered Vernet’s exact position. And he had left a slip of paper where, he felt very sure, it would fall into the right hands. For the rest, he came and went like a comet, and was seen no more for many weeks.
Meanwhile, quiet had been restored in Alan Warburton’s study, and Alan himself now sat with a crumpled bit of paper in his hand.
This bit of paper had been given him by Millie, who, acting upon Winnie’s advice, had made to Alan a very meek confession of the part she had unwittingly played in the drama just enacted.
“Of course, sir, he came in when I went to call Miss Winnie,” she had said contritely. “But oh, he did look so sorrowful, and then that curl of hair! I was so sure it was something about Miss Daisy.”
Alan had listened gravely, had glanced at the bit of paper, and then dismissed her with a kind word and a smile, and without a reprimand.
When this unexpected escape had been joyfully reported to Winnie French, that stony-hearted damsel elevated her nose and said: