steadfast patience and unconquerable devotion to his "art," as he called it, had brought him through twenty years in the police force. He began at the bottom and reached the top. He was the son of a small shopkeeper, and now that his father was dead his mother still ran a little eating-house for her own satisfaction and occupation.
Peter Hardcastle was forty. He had already made arrangements to leave Scotland Yard and set up, single-handed, as a private inquiry agent. The mystery of Chadlands would be the last case to occupy him as a Government servant. In a measure he regretted the fact, for the death of Captain Thomas May, concerning which every known particular was now in his possession, attracted him, and he knew the incident had been widely published. It was a popular mystery, and, as a man of business, he well understood the professional value of such sensations to the man who resolves the puzzle. His attitude toward the case appeared at the outset, and Sir Walter, who had been deeply impressed by the opinions of the dead man's father, and even unconsciously influenced by them, now found himself in the presence of a very different intellect. There was nothing in the least superstitious about Peter Hardcastle. He uttered the views of a remorseless realist, and at the outset committed himself to certain definite assumptions. The inhabitants of the manor house were informed that a friend of Sir Walter's had come to visit Chadlands, and they saw nothing to make them doubt it. For Peter was a great actor. He had mixed with all
