To find out precisely where that somewhere was drew Spargo down to the landing which Miss Baylis had just left.  There was no one about—­he had not, in fact, seen a soul since he entered the building.  Accordingly he went along the corridor into which he had seen Miss Baylis turn.  He knew that all the doors in that house were double ones, and that the outer oak in each was solid and substantial enough to be sound proof.  Yet, as men will under such circumstances, he walked softly; he said to himself, smiling at the thought, that he would be sure to start if somebody suddenly opened a door on him.  But no hand opened any door, and at last he came to the end of the corridor and found himself confronting a small board on which was painted in white letters on a black ground, Mr. Elphick’s Chambers.

Having satisfied himself as to his exact whereabouts, Spargo drew back as quietly as he had come.  There was a window half-way along the corridor from which, he had noticed as he came along, one could catch a glimpse of the Embankment and the Thames; to this he withdrew, and leaning on the sill looked out and considered matters.  Should he go and—­if he could gain admittance—­beard these two conspirators?  Should he wait until the woman came out and let her see that he was on the track?  Should he hide again until she went, and then see Elphick alone?

In the end Spargo did none of these things immediately.  He let things slide for the moment.  He lighted a cigarette and stared at the river and the brown sails, and the buildings across on the Surrey side.  Ten minutes went by—­twenty minutes—­nothing happened.  Then, as half-past nine struck from all the neighbouring clocks, Spargo flung away a second cigarette, marched straight down the corridor and knocked boldly at Mr. Elphick’s door.

Greatly to Spargo’s surprise, the door was opened before there was any necessity to knock again.  And there, calmly confronting him, a benevolent, yet somewhat deprecating expression on his spectacled and placid face, stood Mr. Elphick, a smoking cap on his head, a tasseled smoking jacket over his dress shirt, and a short pipe in his hand.

Spargo was taken aback:  Mr. Elphick apparently was not.  He held the door well open, and motioned the journalist to enter.

“Come in, Mr. Spargo,” he said.  “I was expecting you.  Walk forward into my sitting-room.”

Spargo, much astonished at this reception, passed through an ante-room into a handsomely furnished apartment full of books and pictures.  In spite of the fact that it was still very little past midsummer there was a cheery fire in the grate, and on a table set near a roomy arm-chair was set such creature comforts as a spirit-case, a syphon, a tumbler, and a novel—­from which things Spargo argued that Mr. Elphick had been taking his ease since his dinner.  But in another armchair on the opposite side of the hearth was the forbidding figure of Miss Baylis, blacker, gloomier, more mysterious than ever.  She neither spoke nor moved when Spargo entered:  she did not even look at him.  And Spargo stood staring at her until Mr. Elphick, having closed his doors, touched him on the elbow, and motioned him courteously to a seat.