The next morning he was summoned to the house of Mr. Froyant, and found Derrick Yale already there.
For all their good relationship, the chase of the Crimson Circle had developed into a duel between these strangely different personalities. It was an open secret in newspaper land that Parr’s impending ruin was due less to the unchecked villainies of the Crimson Circle, than to the superhuman brilliancy of this unofficial rival. To do him justice, Yale did his best to discredit this view, but it was held.
Froyant, for all his meanness and his knowledge of Yale’s heavy fees, had commissioned him immediately after he had received the warning. His faith in the police had evaporated, and he made no attempt to disguise his scepticism.
“Mr. Froyant has decided to pay,” were the words which greeted the inspector.
“Eh, of course I shall pay!” exploded Mr. Froyant.
He had aged ten years in the past few days, thought Parr; his face was whiter, and thinner, and he seemed to have shrunk within himself.
“If police headquarters allow this dastardly association to threaten respectable citizens, and cannot even protect their lives, what else is there to be done, but to pay? My friend Pindle has had a similar threat, and he has paid. I cannot stand the strain of this any longer.”
He paced up and down the library floor like a man demented.
“Mr. Froyant will pay,” said Derrick Yale slowly. “But this time I think the Crimson Circle have been just a little too venturesome.”
“What do you mean?” asked Parr.
“Have you the letter, sir?” demanded Yale, and Froyant pulled open a drawer savagely and slammed down the familiar card upon his blotting-pad.
“When did this arrive?” asked Parr as he took it up, noting the Crimson Circle.
“By this morning’s post.”
Parr read the words inscribed in the centre:
We shall call for the money at the office of Mr. Derrick Yale at 3:30 on Friday afternoon. The notes must not run in series. If it is not there for us, you will die the same night.
Three times the inspector read the short message, and then he sighed.
“Well, that simplifies matters,” he said. “Of course, they will not call—”
“I think they will,” said Yale quietly; “but I shall be prepared for them, and I should like you to be on hand, Mr. Parr.”
“If there is one thing more certain than another,” said the inspector phlegmatically, “it is that I shall be on hand. But I don’t think they will come.”
“There I can’t agree with you,” said Yale. “Whoever the central figure of the Crimson Circle is, he or she does not lack courage. And, by the way,” he lowered his voice, “you will meet an old acquaintance at my office.”
Parr shot a quick, suspicious glance at the detective, and saw that he was mildly amused.
“Drummond?” he asked.
Yale nodded.
“You are engaging her?”
“She rather interests me, and I fancy that she is going to be a real help in the solution of this mystery.”
Froyant came in at that moment, and the conversation was tactfully changed.
XX
The Key of River House
It was arranged that Froyant should draw the necessary money from his bank on the Thursday morning to pay the demand, and that Yale should call for it and meet Parr at the former’s office in ample time to make the necessary preparations for the visitor’s reception.
Mr. Parr’s way to headquarters took him past the big house where Jack Beardmore was living in solitude.
The events of the past few weeks had wrought an extraordinary change in the youth. From a boy he had suddenly become a man, with all a man’s balance and understanding. He had inherited an enormous fortune, but with its coming the incentive of life had, for the most part, fallen away. He could never escape the memory of Thalia Drummond; her face was before him, sleeping or waking, and though he called himself a fool, and could, as he did, argue the matter to a logical conclusion, the sum of all his reasoning faded before the image he carried in his heart.
Between Inspector Parr and he there had grown a curious friendship. There was a time when he was near to hating the stout little man, but his good sense had told him that however large a part sentiment had played in his own life, and in the direction of his own actions, it could have no place in a police officer’s moral equipment.
The inspector stopped before the door of the house, and was for passing on, but, obeying an impulse, he walked slowly up the steps and rang the bell. The footman who admitted him was one of the dozen servants who accentuated the emptiness of the mansion.
Jack was in the dining-room, pretending to be interested in a late breakfast.
“Come in, Mr. Parr,” he said, rising. “I suppose you breakfasted hours ago. Is there anything new?”
“Nothing,” said Parr, “except that Mr. Froyant has decided to pay.”
“He would,” said Jack contemptuously, and then, for the first time in a long while, he laughed. “I shouldn’t like to be the Red or Crimson Circle, or whatever it calls itself.”
“Why not?” asked Mr. Parr, with a little light of amusement in his eyes, but he could guess the answer.
“My poor father used to say that Froyant fretted over every cent that was taken from him and never rested until he got it back. When Harvey’s panic is over he will go after the Crimson Circle, and will never leave it until every banknote he has handed to them is repaid.”
“Very likely,” agreed the inspector, “but they aren’t holding the money yet.”
He told Jack the contents of the letter which Froyant had received that morning, and his young host was visibly astonished.
“They’re taking a big risk, aren’t they? It would be a clever man who got the better of Derrick Yale.”
“So I think,” said the inspector, crossing his legs comfortably. “I must take my hat off to Yale. There are
