He led Mr. Mayfair past the room within which Jack was hidden, down to the servants’ door and courteously let him out.  Two minutes later Mr. Pyecroft was again in the second maid’s room.  Mary eagerly sprang forward and caught his hand.

“I waited to thank you—­you were simply superb!” she cried enthusiastically.  “I’ve been telling your sister how wonderful you are.  She’s got to forgive you—­I’ll make her!  And Jack will die laughing when I tell him.”  She herself burst into excited merriment that half-choked her.  “Just think of it—­all the while he was looking—­looking a big story straight in the face!”

She was off to tell Jack.

“One might add, looking two big stories straight in the face, eh, Angelica, my dear?” chuckled Mr. Pyecroft, alias Mr. Preston.

One might add, three big stories, shivered Mrs. De Peyster.

But she did not add this aloud.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MAN IN THE CELLULOID COLLAR

The amused smile which Mr. Pyecroft had worn when he had entered, and which he had subdued to thoughtful sobriety while “Wormwood” was assuaging the invalid’s tribulations, began now to reappear.  It grew.  Mrs. De Peyster could but notice it, for he was smiling straight at her—­that queer, whimsical, twisted smile of his.

“What is it?” she felt forced to ask.

“We three are not the only ones, my dear Angelica,” he replied, “who are trying to slip one across on Mrs. De Peyster.  Our friend the cabinet-maker is on the same job.  I might remark, that he’s about as much a cabinet-maker as yourself.”

“What is he?”

“A detective, my dear.”

“A detective!”

“The variety known as ‘private,’” enlarged Mr. Pyecroft.

“What—­what makes you think so?”

“Well, I felt it my duty to keep an eye on our new guest—­unobtrusively, of course.  When I slipped out a little while ago it was to watch him.  He was working in the library; entirely by accident, my dear Angelica, my eye chanced to be at the keyhole.  He was examining the drawers of the big writing-table; and not paying so much attention to the drawers as to the letters in them.  And from the rapidity with which he was examining the letters it was plain the cabinet-maker knew exactly what he was after.”

“What—­do you think—­it means?” breathed Mrs. De Peyster.

“Some person is trying to get something on Mrs. De Peyster,” returned Mr. Pyecroft.  “What, I don’t know.  But the detective party, I’ve got sized up.  He’s one of those gracious and indispensable noblest-works-of-God who dig up evidence for divorce trials—­lay traps for the so-called ‘guilty-parties,’ ransack waste-paper baskets for incriminating scraps of letters, bribe servants—­and if they find anything, willing to blackmail either side; remarkably impartial and above prejudice in this respect, one must admit.  Altogether a most delectable breed of gentlemen.  What would our best society do without them?  And then again, what would they do without our best society?”