oked hard into the woman's
face: "What do you know about Fire-Tongue?"

He was answered by a stare of blank stupidity.

"You heard me?"

"Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you are talking about."

Quick decisions are required from every member of the Criminal
Investigation Department, and Detective Inspector Wessex came to one
now.

"That will do for the present," he said, turned, and ran down the steps
to the waiting cab.

CHAPTER XV. NAIDA

Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering glimpses of
women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirted
cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. The
workaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of London
had commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasure
seekers, but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing his
tightly-buttoned dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him,
staring out of the window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at
noon. Only one who knew him very well could have detected the fact that
anxiety was written upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to be
directed, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward,
upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knocking
at the door.

"In," said Nicol Brinn.

Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. "A lady to see you, sir."

Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamic
force beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of his
gaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, of
tremendous enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature
of stone again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled
over in the club lands of the world.

"Name?"

"She gave none."

"English?"

"No, sir, a foreign lady."

"In."

Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinn
did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London,
Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. He
raised his clenched hands. "Please God she has come," he whispered.
"Dare I believe it? Dare I believe it?"

The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside, announced:
"The lady to see you, sir."

He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the room.
She wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up about her
face. Thr