eople--to see Jacob Herapath and his secretary together; nevertheless,
Jacob had always spoken of Burchill as being thoroughly capable,
painstaking, thorough and diligent. His airs and graces Jacob put down as
a young man's affectations--yet there came the time when they suited Jacob
no longer.

"I catch him talking too much to Peggie," he had added, in that
conversation of which Barthorpe was thinking. "Better get rid of him
before they pass the too-much stage."

So Burchill had gone, and Barthorpe had heard no more of him until now.
But what he had heard now was a revelation. Burchill had witnessed a
will of Jacob Herapath's, which, if good and valid and the only will in
existence, would leave him, Barthorpe, a ruined man. Burchill had
written a letter to Jacob Herapath asking for some favour, reward,
compensation, as the price of his silence about a secret. What secret?
Barthorpe could not even guess at it--but Burchill had said, evidently
knowing what he was talking about, that Jacob Herapath had taken vast
pains to keep it for fifteen years.

By the time Barthorpe had finished his lunch he had come to the
conclusion that there was only one thing for him to do. He must go
straight to Calengrove Mansions and interview Mr. Frank Burchill. In one
way or another he must make sure of him, or, rather--though it was
really the same thing--sure of what he could tell. And on the way there
he would make sure of something else--in order to do which he presently
commissioned a taxi-cab and bade its driver go first to 331, Upper
Seymour Street.

The domestic who answered Barthorpe's double knock at that house shook
her head when he designedly asked for Mr. Frank Burchill. Nobody of that
name, she said. But on being assured that there once had been a lodger
of that name in residence there, she observed that she would fetch her
mistress, and disappeared to return with an elderly lady who also shook
her head at sight of the caller.

"Mr. Burchill left here some time ago," she said. "Nearly six months. I
don't know where he is."

"Did he leave no address to which his letters were to be sent?" asked
Barthorpe, affecting surprise.

"He said there'd be no letters coming--and there haven't been," answered
the landlady. "And I've neither seen nor heard of him since he went."

Something in her manner suggested to Barthorpe that she had no desire to
renew acquaintance with her former lodger. This sent Barthorpe away well
satisfie