The Chief of the detectives was now furnished with ample food for thought, but the opportunity for meditation seemed remote.
While he sat pondering over the discovery of Carnegie and Sanford, two visitors were announced: Walter Parks, the English patron of Stanhope and Vernet, and John Ainsworth, the returned Australian.
An accident of travel had thrown these two together, almost at the moment when one was landing from, and the other about to embark for, Australia. And the name of John Ainsworth, boldly displayed upon some baggage just set on shore, had put Walter Parks on the scent of its owner. The two men were not slow in understanding each other.
As they now sat in the presence of the Chief, these two men with faces full of earnestness and strength, he mentally pronounced them fine specimens of bronzed and bearded middle age.
Walter Parks was tall and athletic, without one ounce of flesh to spare: with dark features, habitually stern in their expression; a firm chin, and well-developed upper cranium, that made it easy for one to comprehend how naturally and obstinately the man might cling to an idea, or continue a search, for more than twice twenty years; and how impossible it would be for him to abandon the one or lose his enthusiasm for the other.
John Ainsworth was cast in a different mould. Less tall than the Englishman, and of fuller proportions, his face was not wanting in strength, but it lacked the rugged outlines that distinguished the face of the other; his once fair hair was almost white, and his regular features wore a look of habitual melancholy. It was the face of a man who, having lost some great good out of his life, can never forget what that life might have been, had this good gift remained.
“I received your letter,” the Chief said, after a brief exchange of formalities, “but I failed to understand it, Mr. Parks, and was finally forced to conclude that you may have written a previous one—”
“I did,” interrupted the Englishman.
“Which I never received,” finished the Chief. “I supposed you voyaging toward Australia, if not already there.”
“I wrote first,” said Walter Parks, “to notify you of our accidental meeting, and that we would set out immediately for this city. And I wrote again to tell you of Mr. Ainsworth’s sudden illness, and our necessary delay.”