the Crimson Circle,” he said. “It was a piece of criminal neglect to
have taken a man whose identity cannot be established for such an
important piece of work. Yes, Parr has failed.” He sighed. “I am
sorry, in many ways. I like Parr. Of course, he’s one of the
old-fashioned police officers whom you bright outside men affect to
despise, and he hasn’t any extraordinary gifts, although he has been,
in his time, a remarkably good officer. But he’ll have to go. That is
decided. I may tell you this, because I have already made the same
intimation to Parr himself. It is a thousand pities.”
It was no news to Yale: nor was it news to the youngest officer at
police head-quarters.
But the person who seemed least concerned was Inspector Parr himself.
He went about his routine work as though unconscious that any
extraordinary change in his position was contemplated, and even when
he met his successor, who came to look at the office he was shortly to
occupy, was geniality itself.
One afternoon he met Jack Beardmore by accident in the park, and Jack
was struck by the stout little man’s good spirits.
“Well, inspector,” said Jack, “are we any nearer the end?”
Parr nodded.
“I think we are,” he said. “The end of me.”
This was the first definite news Jack had received of the inspector’s
retirement.
“But surely you’re not going? You have all the threads in your hands,
Mr. Parr. They can’t be so foolish as to dispense with you at this
very critical moment unless they have given up all hope of capturing
the scoundrel.”
Mr. Parr thought “they” had given up all hope long ago, but the
attitude of head-quarters was a subject which he did not care to
pursue.
Jack was going down to his country house. He had not visited the place
since his father’s death, and he would not have gone now but the
necessity had arisen for revising a number of farm leases, and since