felt assured that there had been treachery here, as in the Goodge
business; and I asked myself to whom could I impute that treachery?

My instinctive suspicion was of Horatio Paget. And yet, was it not more
probable that Theodore Judson, senr. and Theodore Judson, junr. were
involved in this business, and were watching and counterchecking my
actions with a view to frustrating the plans of my principal? This was
one question which I asked myself as I deliberated upon this mysterious
business. Had the Theodore Judsons some knowledge of a secret marriage
on the part of Matthew Haygarth? and did they suspect the existence of
an heir in the descendant of the issue of that marriage? These were
further questions which I asked myself, and which I found it much more
easy to ask than to answer. After having considered these questions, I
went to the Lancaster-road, saw Miss Judson--assured her, on my word as
a gentleman, that the packet had been delivered by my hands into those
of the waiter at eleven o'clock on the previous day, and asked to see
the envelope. There it was--my large blue wire-wove office envelope,
addressed in my own writing. But in these days of adhesive envelopes
there is nothing easier than to tamper with the fastening of a letter.
I registered a mental vow never again to trust any important document
to the protection of a morsel of gummed paper. I counted the letters,
convinced myself that there was a deficiency, and then set to work to
discover which of the letters had been abstracted. Here I failed
utterly. For my own convenience in copying my extracts, I had numbered
the letters from which I intended to transcribe passages before
beginning my work. My pencilled figures in consecutive order were
visible in the corner of the superscription of every document I had
used. Those numbered covers I now found intact, and I could thus assure
myself that the missing document was one from which I had taken no
extract.

This inspired me with a new alarm. Could it be possible that I had
overlooked some scrap of information more important than all that I had
transcribed?

I racked my brains in the endeavour to recall the contents of that one
missing letter; but although I sat in that social tomb, Miss Judson's
best parlour, until I felt my blood becoming of an arctic quality, I
could remember nothing that seemed worth remembering in the letters I
had laid aside as valueless.

I asked Miss Judson if she had any suspici