“Look here, Doreen, be reasonable,” said he.  “You can do no good to Dudley, believe me.  He has got into some dreadful mess or other; but it’s nothing that you or I or any earthly creature can help him out of.  I confess I didn’t tell you all I found out when I went up to town.  I couldn’t.  I can’t now.  But if you will persist, and if nothing else will keep you quietly here, I—­well, I promise to go up again.  And I’ll warrant if I do I shall learn something which will convince even you that you must give up every thought of him.”

“Will you promise,” said Doreen, solemnly, “to tell me all you find out?”

“No,” replied Max, promptly, “I won’t promise that.  I can’t.  But I think you can trust me to tell you as much as you ought to know.”

With this promise Doreen was obliged to be content.  And when, at luncheon time, it was discovered that certain things were wanted from town, and Max offered to go up for them, Doreen and her brother exchanged a look from which she gathered that he would not forget her errand.

Max had plenty of time, while he was being jolted from Datton to Cannon Street, to decide on the best means of carrying out his promise.  He decided that a visit to Limehouse, to the neighborhood where the property of the late Mr. Horne had been situated, would be better than another visit to Dudley.

Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the property which had belonged to Dudley’s father.  Putting together the two facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley’s possession, and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.

It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory district which fringes the docks.

Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he passed; some broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all.  Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of comparative brightness.

Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot passenger, who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.

Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence.  Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded.  And when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth he had expected to find there.