The men whom I employed in Hampshire--they were recommended to me by the Scotland-yard authorities, certainly--may not have been up to the mark.

In any case, I shall try some one else.

Do you know anything of the detective force ?" Mr.Medler assumed an air of consideration, and then said, "No, he did not know the name of a single detective; his business did not bring him in contact with that class of people." He said this with the tone of a man whose practice was of the loftiest and choicest kind--conveyancing, perhaps, and the management of estates for the landed gentry, marriage-settlements involving the disposition of large fortunes, and so on; whereas Mr.Medler's business lying chiefly among the criminal population, his path in life might have been supposed to be not very remote from the footsteps of eminent police-officers.
"I can get the information elsewhere," Gilbert said carelessly.

"Believe me, I do not mean to let this matter drop." "My dear sir, if I might venture upon a word of friendly advice--not in a professional spirit, but as between man and man--I should warn you against wasting your time and fortune upon a useless pursuit.

If Mrs.
Holbrook has vanished from the world of her own free will--a thing that often happens, eccentric as it may be--she will reappear in good time of her own free will.