Dick remembered the name of the firm quite well—­at least, he thought so.  Should he send a wire to inquire?

But then, in that case, Jack shrewdly pointed out, everything was as it should be.  And this reflection caused the three considerable comfort.

For all that, there were one or two “ifs.”  Was it likely that Frank should have heard the news?  He was notoriously hard up, and the name Talgarth had not appeared, so far, on any of the posters.  Yet he might easily have been given a paper, or picked one up ... and then....

So the discussion went on, and there was not much to be got out of it.  The final decision come to was this:  That guard should be kept, as before, until twelve o’clock midnight; that at that hour the three should leave the archway and, in company, visit two places—­Turner Road and the police-station—­and that the occupants of both these places should be informed of the facts.  And that then all three should go to bed.

(IV)

At ten minutes past eleven Dick moved away from the fire in the Men’s Club, where he had just been warming himself after his vigil, and began to walk up and down.

He had no idea why he was so uncomfortable, and he determined to set to work to reassure himself. (The clergyman, he noticed, was beginning to doze a little by the fire, for the club had just been officially closed and the rooms were empty.)

Of course, it was not pleasant to have to tell a young man that his father and brother were dead (Dick himself was conscious of a considerable shock), but surely the situation was, on the whole, enormously improved.  This morning Frank was a pauper; to-night he was practically a millionaire, as well as a peer of the realm.  This morning his friends had nothing by which they might appeal to him, except common sense and affection, and Frank had very little of the one, and, it would seem, a very curious idea of the other.

Of course, all that affair about Jenny was a bad business (Dick could hardly even now trust himself to think of her too much, and not to discuss her at all), but Frank would get over it.

Then, still walking up and down, and honestly reassured by sheer reason, he began to think of what part Jenny would play in the future....  It was a very odd situation, a very odd situation indeed. (The deliberate and self-restrained Dick used an even stronger expression.) Here was a young woman who had jilted the son and married the father, obviously from ambitious motives, and now found herself almost immediately in the position of a very much unestablished kind of dowager, with the jilted son reigning in her husband’s stead.  And what on earth would happen next?  Diamonds had been trumps; now it looked as if hearts were to succeed them; and what a very remarkable pattern was that of these hearts.

But to come back to Frank—­

And at that moment he heard a noise at the door, and, as the clergyman started up from his doze, Dick saw the towzled and becapped head of the unemployed man and his hand beckoning violently, and heard his hoarse voice adjuring them to make haste.  The gentleman under the arch, he said, was signaling.