Gilbert was quick to take advantage of this concession.  He went down to Hampton next day, and explored the neighbourhood on both sides of the Thames.  His choice fell at last on a pretty little house within a stone’s throw of the Palace gates, the back windows whereof looked out upon the now leafless solitude of Bushy Park, and where there was a comfortable-looking rosy-faced landlady, whose countenance was very pleasant to contemplate after the somewhat lachrymose visage of Mrs. Pratt.  Here he found he could have all the accommodation he required, and hither he promised to bring the invalid early in the following week.

There were as yet no tidings worth speaking of from Mr. Proul.  That distinguished member of the detective profession waited upon Gilbert Fenton with his budget twice a week, but the budget was a barren one.  Mr. Proul’s agent pronounced Mr. Medler’s clerk the toughest individual it had ever been his lot to deal with.  No amount of treating at the public-house round the corner—­and the agent had ascended from the primitive simplicity of a pint of porter to the highest flights in the art of compound liquors—­could exert a softening influence upon that rigid nature.  Either the clerk knew nothing about Percival Nowell, or had been so well schooled as to disclose nothing of what he knew.  Money had been employed by the agent, as well as drink, as a means of temptation; but even every insidious hint of possible gains had failed to move the ill-paid underling to any revelation.

“It’s my belief the man knows nothing, or else I should have had it out of him by hook or by crook,” Mr. Proul’s agent told him, and Mr. Proul repeated to his client.

This first agent having thus come to grief, and having perhaps made himself a suspected person in the eyes of the Medler office by his manoeuvres, a second spy had been placed to keep close watch upon the house, and to follow any person who at all corresponded with the detective idea of Mr. Nowell.  It could be no more than an idea, unfortunately, since Gilbert had been able to give the accomplished Proul no description of the man he wanted to trace.  Above all, the spy was to take special note of any lady who might be seen to enter or leave the office, and to this end he was furnished with a close description of Marian.

Gilbert called upon Mrs. Branston before carrying John Saltram out of town; he fancied that her offer of the Maidenhead villa would be better acknowledged personally than by a letter.  He found the pretty little widow sorely disappointed by Mr. Saltram’s refusal to occupy her house, and it was a little difficult to explain to her why they both preferred other quarters for the convalescent.

“Why will he not accept the smallest favour from me?” Adela Branston asked plaintively.  “He ought to know that there is no arriere pensee in any offer which I make him—­that I have no wish except for his welfare.  Why does he not trust me a little more?”