“Oh, indeed I will, sir,” said Mrs. Martin almost stunned by his eloquence.

He left the woman, overwhelmed, and returned with a very ruffled Lord Flanborough and an indignant Moya to the library.

“What utter nonsense you talk, Michael,” said the girl angrily. “I don’t think it was kind of you to attempt to set my servants against me.”

“Beastly bad taste,” said Lord Flanborough, “and really, Pretherston, you came here as an officer of the law and not as an old acquaintance and I think that you exceed your duties, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Old acquaintances,” said Michael, picking up his hat and his coat from a chair where he had put them before the interview, “are especially made to be forgotten, a peculiarity of which one is reminded in that Bacchanalian anthem which is sung at all public dinners where sobriety is bad form. I was merely endeavouring to inculcate into the mind of your slave a few moral principles, beneficial to you, and to society.”

“Don’t tell me that,” growled Lord Flanborough, “as though I didn’t recognize your sarcasm.”

“Children and the lower orders never recognize sarcasm,” said Michael with a broad smile.

He held out his hand and somewhat reluctantly his lordship extended his own flabby paw.

“Before I go,” he said, “I suppose I had better take a full account of this case. You haven’t a secretary or anybody to whom you can dictate the circumstances? You see I have to make a report to my cold-blooded superiors.”

Moya had reached the stage where whatever remains there was in her friendship with Michael Pretherston had not only died but had been cremated in the fires of her smothered anger and she was as anxious to see the end of this interview as was her father.

“Perhaps you will ring for Miss Tenby,” she said after a pause.

Her father pressed the bell and the waiting Sibble answered it.

“Send Miss Tenby,” said his lordship.

“And I do hope, Michael,” said the girl severely, “that when Miss Tenby is here you will not make such extravagant comments as you did before Martin.”

“Miss Tenby,” interposed Lord Flanborough, “will not welcome such talk. She is a young girl with--er--”

“I know, I know,” said Michael solemnly, “she is genteel. She does forty words a minute on the typewriter and goes to church, filling in her odd moments with needlework and accompanying you on the piano.”

“It must be a wonderful thing to be a detective,” said Moya, sarcastically; “as a matter of fact Miss Tenby is one of the fastest typists in the world.”

Michael swung round on her with an odd look on his face.

“Fastest typists in the world,” he repeated with all the humor gone out of his tone; “does she sing?”

It was the girl’s turn to be astonished.

“Yes, she does, and very beautifully.”

“Does she prefer Italian opera?” he asked.

At this, the girl laughed aloud.

“Somebody has been telling you all about her and you are trying to be mysterious,” she accused.

Further conversation was cut short by the arrival of the girl, who walked in, closed the door and came straight to the desk. She stopped dead at sight of Michael. Moya saw the meeting, saw the girl stiffen and her sorrowful eyes fixed upon the detective’s face.

“Why, Kate!” said Michael Pretherston softly. “Well, well, well! and to think that we meet again under such noble auspices.”

Miss Tenby said nothing.

“And what is the great game?” asked Michael, banteringly. “What beautiful impulse brought you to this sheltered home and how is the Colonel and friend Gregori and all those dear boys? By-the-way, the Colonel must be out by now, Kate. What did he get, three years?”

Still Miss Tenby made no reply.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Lord Flanborough, feeling that the moment had arrived to assert himself. “Do you know this lady?”

“Do I know her,” said Michael, ecstatically; “why, I am one of her greatest admirers, aren’t I, Kate?”

The girl’s sad face softened to a smile which showed the regular lines of her white teeth. She spoke and her voice was gentle and appealing.

“It is perfectly true, Lord Flanborough,” she said quietly, “Mr. Pretherston knows me. He also knows that my uncle, Colonel Westhanger, has been mixed up in a very serious scandal which brought him within the reach of the law. It is perfectly true that when I was a little girl I was known as Kate. It is just as true that I am trying now to live down my association with law-breakers and am trying to rehabilitate myself in the world.”

“H’m,” murmured Lord Flanborough, a little taken back, “very creditable.”

Moya turned to Michael indignantly.

“I suppose that you think you are rendering a great service to the world in trying to drag this poor girl down to the gutter, in exposing her to her employers and in obtaining her dismissal from honest employment.”

“I do,” said Michael shamelessly.

“I think it is a barbarous thing to do!” said Moya angrily.

She had not yet decided in her own mind as to what steps she would take in face of this revelation. In view of her own character, it is possible that “Miss Tenby” would have a very short shift at her hands. But for the moment the opportunity for the display of benevolence and Christian charity was not to be passed over. She saw the girl’s appealing eyes and clasped hands and, for a moment, she felt a sincere thrill of pity for a brave sister struggling to escape the octopus tentacles of law and crime; for a moment she felt a genuinely unselfish desire to help another.

If she expected Inspector the Hon. Michael Pretherston--for such was his incongruous title--to wilt under her reproaches, she was disappointed. Michael had not taken his eyes from the secretary, nor had the twinkle in those eyes abated. He nodded to “Miss Tenby.”

“Kate,” he said, “you are really a wonder, and to think that you have never yet come into the clutches of the law until now.”

“Until now,” said the girl quickly, raising her voice.

He nodded.

“The Prevention of Crimes Act,” murmured Michael. “I can take you,”--he emphasized the “can”--“on a charge of obtaining employment with forged letters of recommendation, also with being a Suspected Person.”

The girl dropped her attitude of humility, threw back her head and laughed, showing her even white teeth.

“Oh, you Mike!” she railed him. “Oh, you busy fellow!”

Her amusement did not last long for instantly her face was set again and the grey eyes blazed with rage.

“One of these days you will be too clever,” she said bitterly. “I have seen better men than you and cleverer men than you go out, Michael Pretherston. You and your Prevention of Crimes Act! You can’t put that bluff over me. The Act does not come into operation until you have a conviction against my name, and that you will never get, you brute!”

“Kate, Kate!” murmured Michael. “There’s a lady present.”

She nodded.

“I guess I’ll get my kit together,” she said; “it hasn’t been exactly a holiday trip.”

“My sympathies are entirely with you,” said Michael; “it must have been awfully dull after the gay orgies of Crime Street.”

“There is one thing I have always wanted to know,” said the girl, pinching her lip thoughtfully.

She walked to the desk, and Lord Flanborough was too much taken back to arrest her progress. Without a word she opened the silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.

“I have always wanted to know what kind of dope this dear old gentleman smoked.”

She looked at the cigarette critically and with an exclamation of disgust threw it back on the desk.

“Gold Flavours!” she said scornfully; “can you beat it, Mike? And he has a hundred thousand a year!”

“You must make allowances for the decadence of the governing classes,” said the soothing Michael.

He turned and nodded farewell to the girl and with Miss Tenby’s arm in his he passed out of the room, and Lord Flanborough and his daughter looked at one another in speechless amazement.