“Would you do that for me, Mr. Fairhurst?” asked Violet Arnell, her voice plaintively pleading her case. “If you would, I should be so grateful. You see, I have no one now that father is dead and Harry is arrested. I know that Harry can’t be guilty of these horrible crimes, but I feel so completely helpless. There seems to be nothing that I can do.”

“That’s all right, my dear,” interjected Sarah gruffly. “We’ll do everything we can to help you. We’ll get the rogue who’s responsible for all this. Never worry.”

“I think,” Henry announced, “that I’ll go straight up to Scotland Yard now.”

“Do,” said his sister. “There’s no time to be lost. Take a taxi, Henry.”

This was a new attitude with a vengeance. Sarah had always suggested that anything more expensive than a bus or a tube train would be ruinously extravagant. But Henry was rapidly learning that the Sarah he had known all his life was not necessarily the real Sarah, after all.

“Only one thing,” he said, as he struggled into his overcoat, and wound an old-fashioned muffler of the type known as a “comforter” around his neck. “Don’t expect sudden results. We may not land our fish too quickly, you know. We’re fishing in deep waters.”

How deep the waters were he little guessed.

Chapter XI

Chapter XI

The Exhumation

“My dear Mr. Fairhurst,” said Shelley in some irritation, “you surely can’t expect me to go further than that. I have told you that I feel tolerably sure that Mr. Baker is guilty—he would not have been arrested without thoroughly good grounds. Scotland Yard is not in the habit of arresting innocent men.”

Henry looked pained. “I was not, my dear Inspector,” he moaned, “suggesting that Scotland Yard was in the habit of doing anything so dreadful. But I was suggesting that mistakes occur, and that this was one of the mistakes.”

“If you think so, my dear sir,” returned Shelley, “my advice to you is: Go on and prove it! Other people have tried to do that, but not many of them have found themselves able to beat the Yard at its own game. If you think you can—well, good luck to you! But don’t expect any help from us.”

“But I do expect some help from you,” Henry complained. “If I am going to set to work to find a murderer, Inspector, I have to possess all the necessary data. That is only reasonable, surely.”

Shelley grinned. “Daniel in the den of lions isn’t in it, Mr. Fairhurst,” he said. “An amateur in the den of professionals. Very well; in view of the fact that you have been good enough to give us some exceedingly useful information, I will allow you to know just a little of what is being done by us—but on one condition.”