“Well, there’s something in knowing all that, Ambler, my lad,” answered Allerdyke.  “You can’t get to know too much about the folks you’re dealing with, you know.  Very good—­we’ll leave that now.  What d’ye think o’ this?”

He unfolded and held up the reward bill, first looking as fondly at it as a youthful author looks at his first printed performance, and then glancing at his manager to see what effect it had upon him.  And he saw Ambler Appleyard’s sandy eyebrows go up in a definite arch.

“Fifty thousand!” muttered Appleyard.  “Whew!  It’s a stiff figure, Mr. Allerdyke.  You’ve put a thick finger in that pie, I’m thinking!”

“One half from the Princess; twenty thousand from me; five thousand from the singing lady,” whispered Allerdyke.  “That’s how it’s made up, my lad.  And naught’ll please me better than to see it paid out—­that’s a fact!”

“You’ll have some triers,” said Appleyard, with an emphatic wag of the head.  “Make no mistake about that!  Fifty thousand!  Gosh!—­why, anybody that’s got the least clue, the slightest idea—­and there must be somebody—­’ll have a go in for all he or she’s worth!”

“Let ’em try!” exclaimed Allerdyke.  “The welcome man’s the chap that enables us to recover and convict.  Here, shove that bill in your pocket, and read it at your leisure—­there’s something to think about in what it says, I promise you.”

Appleyard went away from the club an hour and a half later, thinking hard enough.  But he was not thinking about the reward bill.  What he was thinking about, had been thinking about from the moment in which Allerdyke had drawn him into the smoking-room window and pointed her out to him, was—­Mrs. Marlow.  For Appleyard knew Mrs. Marlow well enough, but (always those buts in life, he reflected with a cynical laugh as he threaded his way back to Gresham Street) he knew her by another name—­Miss Slade.  And now he was wondering why Miss Slade or Mrs. Marlow had two names, and why she appeared to be one person as he knew her in private life, and another as he had seen her that very morning.

On Appleyard’s first coming to town in the capacity of sole manager of the London warehouse of Allerdyke and Partners, Limited, he had set himself up in two rooms in a Bloomsbury lodging-house.  He knew little of London life at that time, or he would have known that he was thus condemning himself to a drab and dreary existence.  As it was, he quickly learnt by experience, and within six months, having picked up a comfortable knowledge of things, he transferred himself to one of those well-equipped boarding establishments in the best part of Bayswater, wherein bachelors, old maids, young women, widowers, and married couples without encumbrance, can live together in as much or as little friendship and intercourse as pleases their individual tastes.  Ambler Appleyard took his time and selected the likeliest place he could find after much inspection of many similar places.