aythwaite hoped to find, and when they parted, late at night, they
were no wiser than when they began their investigations.

"Go home to bed," counselled the Professor. "Put the whole thing out of
your head until Monday morning. Don't even think about it. Come and see
me on Monday, first thing, and we'll start again. For by the Lord Harry!
I'll find out yet what the real nature of Jacob Herapath's transaction
with Dimambro was, if I have to track Dimambro all through Italy!"

Selwood was glad enough to put everything out of his mind; it seemed to him
a hopeless task to search for a man to whose identity they only had the
very faintest clue. But before noon of the next day--Sunday--he was face
to face with a new phase of the problem. Since her uncle's death, Peggie
had begun to show a quiet reliance on Selwood. It had come to be tacitly
understood between them that he was to be in constant attendance on her
for the present, at any rate. He spent all his time at the house in
Portman Square; he saved its young mistress all the trouble he could; he
accompanied her in her goings and comings. And of late he had taken to
attending her to a certain neighbouring church, whereto Peggie, like a
well-regulated young lady, was constant in her Sunday visits. There in
the Herapath family pew, he and Peggie sat together on this particular
Sunday morning, neither with any thought that the Herapath mystery had
penetrated to their sacred surroundings. Selwood had been glad to take
Cox-Raythwaite's advice and to put the thing out of his mind for thirty-six
hours: Peggie had nothing in her mind but what was proper to the occasion.

Jacob Herapath had been an old-fashioned man in many respects; one of
his fads was an insistence upon having a family pew in the church which
he attended, and in furnishing it with his own cushions, mats, and
books. Consequently Peggie left her own prayer-book in that pew from
Sunday to Sunday. She picked it up now, and opened it at the usual
familiar place. And from that place immediately dropped a folded note.

Had this communication been a _billet-doux_, Peggie could hardly have
betrayed more alarm and confusion. For a moment she let the thing rest
in the palm of her hand, holding the hand out towards Selwood at her
side; then with trembling fingers she unfolded it in such a fashion that
she and Selwood read it together. With astonished eyes and beating hearts
they found themselves looking at a half-sheet of