He had not the heart to give him this joyful assurance and then offset it by the statement that she was immured somewhere in the walls of a prison in the power of two wicked and unscrupulous men.
He determined, if possible, to trace out her whereabouts and rescue her before revealing the whole truth to the sorrowing father.
He therefore compromised the matter by telling a portion only of the truth to the banker.
Namely, that he had traced the body of the young girl to a certain house in the suburbs, but that it had been removed thence when he went to look for it, and that he was following up a new clew which he confidently hoped would soon lead to its recovery.
He also added the fact that Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville were the guilty parties in the matter.
Mr. Lawrence was anxious at first to have these two men arrested and forced to acknowledge their guilt and return the missing body, but he yielded to Mr. Shelton's contrary persuasions on being assured that such a proceeding might result in the disastrous failure of his plan.
"For though we might imprison them, Mr. Lawrence," said he, "the rigor of the law could not force them to divulge their dreadful secret unless they chose to do so. It is only too probable that they would maintain the most obstinate silence on the subject. Therefore let them go free a little longer, and let us oppose cunning to cunning, and fraud to fraud until we attain our end."
The banker acquiesced, and the detective hurried away, for he was resolved that the wily schemers should not elude him again as they had certainly done on the occasion of the removal of Lily Lawrence from the Leverets' house.
Once more he and his faithful colleague took up their task of espionage, but it was unavailing for weeks. Harold Colville had conceived a dim suspicion that he was watched, and was therefore doubly vigilant and wary. For more than a month he did not visit Lily, but contented himself by receiving cautious bulletins of her welfare from Doctor Heath, weekly. The messages went through the mails and were directed to a fictitious address.