“Don’t like it, Nigel, my boy; don’t like it at all!” he ejaculated, suddenly, in his close-clipped fashion.  “These detectives are the very devil to pay.  Get ’em in one’s house and they’re like doctors—­including, of course, my humble self—­difficult to get out.  Part of the profession, my boy.  But a beastly nuisance.  Seems to me I’d rather have the mystery than the men.  Simpler, anyway.  And fees, you know, are heavy.”

Merriton swung round upon his heel suddenly, his brows like a thunder cloud.

“I don’t care a damn about that,” he broke out angrily.  “Let ’em take every penny I’ve got, so long as they solve the thing!  But I can’t get away from it—­I just can’t.  Hangs over me night and day like the sword of Damocles!  Until the mystery of Wynne’s disappearance is cleared up, I tell you ’Toinette and I can’t marry.  She feels the same.  And—­and—­we’ve the house all ready, you know, everything fixed and in order, except this.  When poor old Collins disappeared, too, I found I’d reached my limit.  So here these detectives are, and, on the whole, jolly decent chaps I find ’em.”

Doctor Bartholomew shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Have it your own way, my boy.”  But what he really did say was: 

“What are their names?”

“Young chap’s Headland—­George or John Headland, I don’t remember quite which.  Other one’s Lake—­Gregory Lake.”

“H’m.  Good name that, Nigel.  Ought to be some brains behind it.  But I never did pin my faith on policemen, you know, boy.  Scotland Yard’s made so many mistakes that if it hadn’t been for that chap Cleek, they’d have ruined themselves altogether.  Now, he’s a man, if you like!  Pity you couldn’t get him while you’re about it.”

The impulse to tell who “George Headland” really was to this firm friend who had been more than a father to him, even in the old days, and who had made a point of dropping down upon him, informally, ever since the trouble over Dacre Wynne’s disappearance, took hold of Nigel.  But he shook it off.  He had given his word.  And if he could not tell ’Toinette, then no other soul in the universe should know.  So he simply tossed his shoulders, and, going back to the window, looked out of it, to hide the something of triumph which had stolen into his face.

Truth to tell, he was obsessed with a feeling that something was going to happen, and happen soon.  The premonition, to one who was not used to such things, carried all the more conviction.  With Cleek on the track—­anything might happen.  Cleek was a man for whom things never stood still, and his amazing brain was concentrated upon this problem as it had been concentrated—­successfully—­upon others.  Merriton had a feeling that it was only a matter of time.

Then, just as he was standing there, humming something softly beneath his breath, the cavalcade, headed by Cleek and Mr. Narkom, rather grim and silent, reached the gateway.  Behind them—­Merriton gave a sudden cry which brought the doctor to his side—­behind them three men were carrying something—­something bulky and large and wrapped in a black oilskin tarpaulin.  And one of the men was Headland’s servant, Dollops!  He recognized that, even as his inner consciousness told him that his “something” was about to happen now.