take hold of--no clue, no
signs of foul play.

"Not yet," agreed Allerdyke. "But--there may be. Well, I'm afraid that
register is no good. It's meaningless. A list of names conveys
nothing--except for future reference. For the present we must wait.
But--in any way you can--keep your eyes open. There's one thing you can
do--there was a lady in here last night who took Room 265 and left it at
midnight to go away in a motor-car which your night-porter got for her. I
particularly want to see the chambermaid who attended that lady. Let me
see her privately--I've a question to ask her."

"She shall be sent up to your sitting-room as soon as I've found her,"
responded the manager. "This is the servants' breakfast-hour, but--"

"Send her up there after nine o'clock," said Allerdyke. "In the meantime
I've another inquiry to make elsewhere."

He found Gaffney and sent him round to the garage from which Miss Celia
Lennard had obtained her midnight car, with instructions to find the
chauffeur who had driven her, and to get from him what information he
could as to her movements subsequent to the rencontre at Howden.

"Don't excite his suspicions," said Allerdyke, "but pump him for any news
he can give you. I want to know what became of her."

Gaffney speedily returned, fully informed of Miss Lennard's movements up
to a certain point. The chauffeur had just got back, and was about to
seek the bed from which he had been pulled at one o'clock in the morning.
He had taken the lady to York--only to find that there was no train
thence to Edinburgh until after nine o'clock. So she had turned into the
Station Hotel at York, to wait, and there he had left her.

There was little of importance in this, but it seemed to indicate that
Miss Lennard was certainly about to travel North, and that her hurried
departure from the hotel was due to a genuine desire to reach her
ultimate destination as speedily as possible. While Allerdyke was
wondering if it would be worth while to follow her up, merely because she
had been a fellow-passenger with his cousin, the manager came to him with
another telegram.

"That lady we were talking about," he said, laying the telegram before
Allerdyke, "has just sent me this. I thought you'd like to see it as you
were asking about her."

Allerdyke saw that the message was addressed to the manager, and had been
dispatched from York railway station three-quarters of a hour previously.

"Please ask chambermaid t