od chaps. It isn't like
the old days. There was one man--Winters his name was--who came up to
the Yard to see me once. He was told I was at Vine Street. He went down
there and was told I hadn't been there.

"'Here's a piece of luck,' he says to himself, and went back to his
office. There he wrote up a couple of columns telling how the whole of
the C.I.D. had lost trace of me. I came out of Bow Street, where I'd
been giving evidence in a case, to see a big contents-bill staring me in
the face--

FAMOUS
DETECTIVE
VANISHES

"Before I could buy a paper, another newspaper chap comes along. He
stared at me as if I was a ghost.

"'Hello!' he says. 'Don't you know you're lost? Every pressman in London
is looking for you.'

"'Am I?' says I. 'How?'

"Then it all came out. Since then I have been very careful in dealing
with newspaper men."

Sir Hilary laughed and nodded. "Is there anything more?" he asked.

"Yes." Foyle had grown grave once more. "I handed over the cipher that
we found at Grave Street to Jones, to see if he could make anything out
of it. He's an expert at these kind of puzzles. Well, he's just
reported that the thing is simple as it stands though in other
circumstances it might be difficult. The translation runs--

"This will be the best method of communicating with E. M. if L. supplies
her with key. Her 'phone number 12845 Gerrard."

CHAPTER XXIII

Unless a case is elucidated within a day or two of the commission of an
offence the first hot pursuit resolves itself into a dogged, wearisome
but untiring watchfulness on the part of the C.I.D. A case is never
abandoned while there remains a chance, however slight, of running a
criminal to earth. And even when the detectives, like hounds baffled at
a scent, are called off, there remains the gambler's element of luck.
Even if the man who had original charge of the case should be dead when
some new element re-opens an inquiry, the result of his work is always
available, stored away in the Registry at Scotland Yard. There are
statements, reports, conclusions--the case complete up to the moment he
left it. The precaution is a useful one. A death-bed confession may
implicate confederates, accomplices may quarrel, a jealous woman may
give information. There have been unsolved mysteries, but no man may say
when a crime is unsolvable.

Heldon Foyle had many avenues of information when it was a matter of
ordinary professional crime. Th