lf-crowns obtained some information.

"No, sir," replied the girl, "Miss Nella's not come home. The master's
in a great state about her. She went out for a walk yesterday afternoon,
and though he's been to the police, nobody seems to have seen her."

"She was her father's assistant in his experiments, I've heard?"

"Yes, sir, she was. Ever since poor Mrs. Emden died, two years ago,
she's been her father's right hand."

"Had she a lover?"

"Well"--and the girl hesitated. "We in the kitchen have our suspicions.
Davis the cook saw her last Sunday walking over in Teddington with a
dark young man, who looked like a foreigner. But," she added, "why do
you want to know all this?"

"I'm trying to trace the young lady," I said, in the hope that she would
believe me to be a detective. "Tell me," I urged; "does the Professor
make any experiments at home?"

"Oh yes, sir; his laboratory is up on the top floor--fitted up with an
electric furnace and lots of funny appliances."

"Has he any friends who are foreigners?" I inquired.

"Not that I know of," was the girl's reply. And I thought she regarded
me rather strangely. Why, I could not conceive. Her name was Annie
Whybrow, she told me, and then, unable to detain her longer I allowed
her to re-enter the house.

Vera's story of the coffin being taken into that mysterious house in
Brunswick Road, combined with the non-return of the pretty Nella, was
certainly mystifying.

I returned to London, saw Vera, and we resolved to wire to Ray at
Selkirk asking him to return to London as soon as possible.

That night, and the next, I haunted the usual resorts of foreigners in
the West End, the underground Cafe de l'Europe, the Spaten beer-hall in
Leicester Square, the Cafe Monico, the Gambrinus, and other places, in
order to discover the young Italian. On the second evening I was
successful, for I saw him in the Monico, and on inquiring of a man I
knew, I learnt that his name was Uberto Mellini, that until recently he
had lived in Paris, and that at the present moment he was staying in a
house in Dean Street, Soho.

At midnight, when I returned to Bloomsbury, I found Vera and Ray
anxiously awaiting me. The latter had only arrived in London from
Scotland an hour before, and his fiancee had evidently told him of the
curious events which had transpired and the sinister mystery surrounding
the young girl's disappearance.

"I can see no reason for it at all," he declared, when we com