its long table covered with test-tubes and the
paraphernalia of medical research.

"Well," said White, dropping into a chair, "what happened?"

"That is what I want to know," said the doctor.

He took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it and the two men
looked at one another without speaking.

"Do you think she had the letters and hid them?"

"Impossible," replied the doctor briefly.

White grunted, took a cigar from a long leather case, bit off the end
savagely and reached out his hand for a match.

"'The best-laid schemes of mice and men!'" he quoted.

"Oh, shut up," said the doctor savagely.

He was pacing the study with long strides. He stopped at one end of the
room staring moodily through the window, his hands thrust in his
pockets.

"I wonder what happened," he said again. "Well, that can wait. Now just
tell me exactly how matters stand in regard to you and Punsonby's."

"I have all the figures here," said Mr. White, as he thrust his hand
into the inside pocket of his frock-coat, "I can raise L40,000 by
debentures and--hello, what's this?"

He drew from his pocket a white packet, fastened about by a rubber band.
This he slipped off and gasped, for in his hands were three registered
letters, and they were addressed to Messrs. Punsonby, and each had been
slit open.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD

No. 342, Lothbury, is a block of business offices somewhat unpretentious
in their approach but of surprising depth and importance when explored.
Oliva Cresswell stood for awhile in the great lobby, inspecting the
names of the occupants, which were inscribed on porcelain slips in two
big frames on each wall of the vestibule.

After a lengthy search she discovered the name of the Beale Agency under
the heading "fourth floor" and made her way to the elevator.

Mr. Beale's office was at the end of a seemingly interminable corridor
and consisted, as she was to find, of an outer and an inner chamber. The
outer was simply furnished with a table, two chairs and a railed fence
bisected with a little wooden gateway.

A boy sat at one table, engaged in laborious exercise on a typewriter
with one finger of one hand.

He jumped up as she came through the door.

"Miss Cresswell?" he asked. "Mr. Beale will see you."

He opened the wicket-gate and led the way to a door marked "Private."

It was Beale who opened the door in response to the knock.

"Come in, Miss Cresswell," he said che