Shelley produced his old briar pipe, filled it with rank tobacco, and lit up. Then he turned to the little man who had thus unexpectedly joined their party, and asked him what was the important information which he had to give them.

“Moses Moss,” announced Mr. Fairhurst in dramatic tones, “is in London!”

Cunningham emitted a disgusted grunt. “Is that all you have to tell us, Mr. Fairhurst?” he asked in tones of bitter contempt.

“Isn’t that enough?” asked Henry. “I was walking along the Strand when I saw him. You could have knocked me down with a feather. There he was, as bold as brass, just marching along the Strand as if he owned the place.”

“I suppose,” remarked Shelley, “that you didn’t see a shortish, middle-aged man with a tweed coat and a black Homburg hat, a few yards behind him?”

“No,” said Mr. Fairhurst. “Who was he?”

“Detective-Sergeant Pinto, of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard,” answered Shelley with a superior smile.

“One of your men?” Henry Fairhurst looked completely bewildered.

“One of our men.”

“Then you knew all about it?”

“We knew all about it.”

“But why am I coming to Sheffield with you?”

“Why, indeed?”

Henry was worried at the thought that he had mulcted the tax-payers of Great Britain of the price of one first-class return ticket from St. Pancras to Sheffield; and Shelley was vaguely annoyed that he had somehow managed to burden himself with an outsider at this vital stage of his investigation. Still, it couldn’t be helped; and he would have to send him back to London at the first opportunity, on the first available train.

“I suppose,” he asked, thinking that he could, after all, be sensible, and try if Henry had any information on the subject which was uppermost in his mind, “that you never chanced to come across a man called J. K. Wallace?”

“Why,” was the surprising answer, “what has old J. K. been doing now?”

“Mr. Fairhurst,” Shelley burst out, “you are a gift from the gods. Again and again you have brought me some information, and this time you have the best of the lot. You actually knew Mr. J. K. Wallace?”

“Of course I did. It was many years ago. He was…” Henry hesitated, as if in some embarrassment; and then went on bravely, taking his courage firmly in both hands: “He was at one time one of my best friends; but I disapproved of his way of life and we quarrelled, so that in recent years I have not met him.”

Shelley and Cunningham exchanged significant glances. This, they told each other, was the greatest stroke of luck that they had managed to secure.

“Tell me,” said Mr. Shelley, “how did you meet the man in the first instance?”

“It was,” answered Henry, “in the Reading Room of the British Museum, some eight or nine years ago.”

“H’m,” commented Shelley. “Not long after he was released from Dartmoor.”