n the ground
that fresh information needed investigation before Scotland Yard could
proceed with the charge against Hazel Rath. An additional week was
granted with reluctance by the chairman of the bench, a Nonconformist
draper with political ambitions, who seized the opportunity to impress
the electors of a constituency he was nursing for the next general
election by making some spirited remarks on the sanctity of British
liberty, which he coupled with a scathing reference to the dilatory
methods of Scotland Yard. He let it be understood that the police must
be prepared at the next hearing to go on with the charge against the
prisoner or withdraw it altogether.

In the face of these awkward alternatives, Merrington pursued the quest
for Nepcote with vigour. The men working immediately under his
instructions were spurred into an excess of energy which brought about
the detention of several young men who could not adequately explain
themselves or their right to liberty in the great city of London. But
none of these captures turned out to be Nepcote. Merrington believed he
was hiding in London, but at the end of five days he still remained
mysteriously at liberty in spite of the constant search for him. He
seemed to have disappeared as completely as though he had passed out of
the world and merged his identity into a chiselled name and a banal
aspiration on a tombstone.

In the angry consciousness of failure, Merrington was not blind to the
fact that he had only his own impetuosity to blame for allowing Nepcote
to slip through his fingers. His mistake was due to his dislike of
private detectives and his unbelief in modern deductive methods of crime
solution. His own system, which is the system of Scotland Yard, was
based on motive and knowledge. If he found a strong motive for a crime
he searched for the person to whom it pointed. If there was no apparent
motive he fell back on his great knowledge of the underworld and its
denizens to fit a criminal to the crime. The system has its measure of
success, as the records of Scotland Yard attest.

Merrington had brought both methods to bear in his handling of the
Heredith case. When his original investigations failed to reveal a
motive for the murder, he determined to return to London to ascertain
what dangerous criminals were at liberty who might have committed the
murder. His own view then was that the murder was the work of an old
hand who had entered the moat-house to co