ell aired, I suppose."

George Deaves winced. He and his father exchanged a glance. "There's
no hurry," he said. "We may have been mistaken. At any rate we don't
want any unnecessary publicity."

"You don't mean to say you're going to _pay_!" cried Evan involuntarily.

"Wouldn't you advise it?" asked the old man craftily.

"No! Fight! Call their bluff! The nervy blackguards! Oh, to give up
to them would be too tame!"

"I guess he isn't one of them, George," Simeon Deaves said dryly.

George apparently agreed with him, though he made no direct
acknowledgment.

Evan struck while the iron was hot. "Look here, here's a proposition
for you. This thing interests me a whole lot. That letter was written
by a damn clever crook, humorous too. I'd like to match my wits
against his. Let me have a try at running them down. Won't cost you a
cent more than my salary, and you won't have to let in any outsiders on
the affair. Of course I've had no experience, but if I fail you'll be
no worse off than you are now. If you go to the police it will be the
newspaper sensation of the year."

Father and son looked at each other again. Evan had given them two
potent reasons for listening to his proposal. But before they had time
to express themselves there was an interruption.

A lady swept into the room like a northwest gale, one whose attire put
the rose and the lily to shame; comely in her own person too after a
somewhat hard and glassy style. Evan guessed this was Mrs. George
Deaves, otherwise Maud. At the sight of her stormy brows father and
son looked like two schoolboys caught in the act.

"What's going on?" she peremptorily demanded. "What are all the men
servants waiting in the hall for?"

"Nothing, my dear," said George Deaves in a casual tone belied by his
anxious eye. "They are merely waiting for their orders."

"My maid told me there was a policeman sitting in the housekeeper's
room."

"Must be a friend of Mrs. Liffey's," her husband said with feeble
humour.

"Friend nothing!" was the contemptuous reply. She marched up to her
father-in-law, who silently snarled and gave ground like a cat.
"You've been up to your old tricks!" she cried. "Another disgraceful
street scene! I see it in both your faces. Another blackmailing
letter, I suppose!"

Young Deaves unobtrusively sought to turn over the letter on his desk,
but she caught the movement out of the tail of her eye, and, whirling
round, s