e time I can to cultivate her acquaintance."

"Been in town long?" asked Allerdyke, wanting to say something and
impelled to this apparently trite question by the New Yorker's own
observations.

"Since the first week in April," answered Van Koon, "And as this is my
first visit to England, I'm endeavouring to do everything well. Fullaway
tells me, Mr. Allerdyke, that you come from Bradford, the big
manufacturing city up north. Well, now, Bradford is one of the places on
my list--hullo!" he exclaimed, breaking off short. "I guess here's a man
who's wanting you, Fullaway, in a considerable bit of a hurry."

Fullaway and Allerdyke looked out on to the pavement and saw Blindway,
who had just jumped out of a taxi-cab, and was advancing upon them. He
came up and addressed them jointly--would they go back with him at once
to New Scotland Yard?--the chief wanted to see them for a few minutes.

"Come on, Allerdyke," said Fullaway. "We'd better go at once. Van Koon,"
he continued, turning to his compatriot, "do me a favour--just look in at
my rooms upstairs, and tell Mrs. Marlow, if she's come--she hadn't
arrived when I was up there ten minutes ago--that I'm called out for an
hour or so--ask her to attend to anything that turns up until I come
back--shan't be long."

Van Koon nodded and walked back into the hotel, while Allerdyke and
Fullaway joined the detective in the cab and set out westward.

"What is it?" asked Fullaway. "Something new?"

"Can't say, exactly," replied Blindway. "The chief's got some woman there
who thinks she can tell something about the French maid, so he sent me
for you, and he's sent another man for Miss Lennard. It may be something
good; it mayn't. Otherwise," he concluded with a shake of the head that
was almost dismal, "otherwise, I don't know of anything new. Never knew
of a case in my life, gentlemen, in which less turned up than's turning
up in this affair! And fifty thousand pounds going a-begging!"

"I suppose this woman's after it," remarked Fullaway. "You didn't hear of
anything she had to tell?"

"Nothing," answered Blindway. "You'll hear it in a minute or two."

He took them straight up into the same room, and the same official whom
they had previously seen, and who now sat at his desk with Celia Lennard
on one side of him, and a middle-aged woman, evidently of the poorer
classes, on the other. Allerdyke and Fullaway, after a brief interchange
of salutations with the official and the