Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the front door she whispered, “We haven’t said anything to Daisy yet.  Young girls can’t keep secrets.”

Chandler nodded comprehendingly.  He now looked the low character he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened, and tired out.

Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.

“I never!” she exclaimed.  “What a difference it do make, to be sure!  Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler.”

And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much that he quite cheered up.  Bunting had been very dull and quiet all that afternoon.

“It won’t take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,” said the young man rather ruefully.

His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful—­that he had failed, that is, in getting any information worth having.  And though, in a sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.

Bunting felt it hard that he couldn’t ask the questions that were trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him, but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of half suspense.  There was one important fact he longed to know, and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into the hall.

“Where did it happen?” he whispered.  “Just tell me that, Joe?”

“Primrose Hill,” said the other briefly.  “You’ll know all about it in a minute or two, for it’ll be all in the last editions of the evening papers.  That’s what’s been arranged.”

“No arrest I suppose?”

Chandler shook his head despondently.  “No,” he said, “I’m inclined to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time.  But one can only do one’s best.  I don’t know if Mrs. Bunting told you I’d got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just before closing-time.  Well, she’s said all she knew, and it’s as clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about was only a harmless luny.  He gave her a sovereign just because she told him she was a teetotaller!” He laughed ruefully.

Even Bunting was diverted at the notion.  “Well, that’s a queer thing for a barmaid to be!” he exclaimed.  “She’s niece to the people what keeps the public,” explained Chandler; and then he went out of the front door with a cheerful “So long!”

When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared.  She had gone downstairs with the tray.  “Where’s my girl?” he said irritably.

“She’s just taken the tray downstairs.”

He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply, “Daisy!  Daisy, child!  Are you down there?”