“The detective?  Good God, Calton, surely you will not do so!”

“I must,” replied the barrister, quietly.  “Kilsip is firmly persuaded that Moreland committed the crime, and I have the same dread of his pertinacity as you had of mine.  He may find out all.”

“What must be, must be,” said Fitzgerald, clenching his hands.  “But I hope no one else will find out this miserable story.  There’s Moreland, for instance.”

“Ah, true!” said Calton, thoughtfully.  “He called and saw Frettlby the other night, you say?”

“Yes.  I wonder what for?”

“There is only one answer,” said the barrister, slowly.  “He must have seen Frettlby following Whyte when he left the hotel, and wanted hush-money.”

“I wonder if he got it?” observed Fitzgerald.

“Oh, I’ll soon find that out,” answered Calton, opening the drawer again, and taking out the dead man’s cheque-book.  “Let me see what cheques have been drawn lately.”

Most of the blocks were filled up for small amounts, and one or two for a hundred or so.  Calton could find no large sum such as Moreland would have demanded, when, at the very end of the book, he found a cheque torn off, leaving the block-slip quite blank.

“There you are,” he said, triumphantly holding out the book to Fitzgerald.  “He wasn’t such a fool as to write in the amount on the block, but tore the cheque out, and wrote in the sum required.”

“And what’s to be done about it?”

“Let him keep it, of course,” answered Calton, shrugging his shoulders.  “It’s the only way to secure his silence.”

“I expect he cashed it yesterday, and is off by this time,” said Brian, after a moment’s pause.

“So much the better for us,” said Calton, grimly.  “But I don’t think he’s off, or Kilsip would have let me know.  We must tell him, or he’ll get everything out of Moreland, and the consequences will be that all Melbourne will know the story; whereas, by showing him the confession, we get him to leave Moreland alone, and thus secure silence in both cases.”

“I suppose we must see Chinston?”

“Yes, of course.  I will telegraph to him and Kilsip to come up to my office this afternoon at three o’clock, and then we will settle the whole matter.”

“And Sal Rawlins?”

“Oh!  I quite forgot about her,” said Calton, in a perplexed voice.  “She knows nothing about her parents, and, of course, Mark Frettlby died in the belief that she was dead.”

“We must tell Madge,” said Brian, gloomily.  “There is no help for it.  Sal is by rights the heiress to the money of her dead father.”

“That depends upon the will,” replied Calton, dryly.  “If it specifies that the money is left to ‘my daughter, Margaret Frettlby,’ Sal Rawlins can have no claim; and if such is the case, it will be no good telling her who she is.”

“And what’s to be done?”