thousand men to search the wood anything
like thoroughly."

"There's some sort of house on the estate, I suppose?" demanded Foyle.

"Yes, I've not been up to it, but I'm told it's a big, rambling old
place called Dalehurst Grange, approached through sloping meadows and
backing on to the woods. It would be easy for a man to see any one in
the house coming from the front and slip away into the undergrowth.
Malley's gone up to have a look at the place. We'll need a search
warrant to go over the place, but I don't think it'll be any good."

"Nor I," agreed Foyle. "It'll have to be done some other way. You've
asked the county constabulary to make inquiries and to watch the railway
stations round about, of course? All right. You run things on your own
discretion, and if you or Malley see me just shut your eyes. Now give me
your address and report to the Yard as usual."

The superintendent lit a cigar after he had replaced the receiver, and
thoughtfully toasted his slippered feet before the fire. Presently he
rose, turned over the leaves of a time-table, and discovering that
Dalehurst possessed no railway station, discarded it in favour of a
gazetteer. From that he found that the village was four miles from
Deepnook, and the time-table again consulted showed him that he could
reach the latter place in a couple of hours from Waterloo.

Before he went to bed that night he packed the kit-bag that had
accompanied him in most of his wanderings all over the globe. Other
things than clothes found a place in its depths, among them a jemmy,
some putty, and a glazier's diamond. The superintendent had an idea that
they might be more effective than a search warrant.

Yet, as he turned the key, he realised that the energy and the efforts
of both himself and Green might be wasted. There was a possibility that
it was a blind trail--that Grell had contrived the whole thing as a
blind, and had slipped out of the net that had been drawn for the brown
motor-car. The thought induced Foyle to telephone through to
headquarters to order a fresh warning to be wired through to the police
at all the ports. He believed in leaving as little as possible to
chance.

The night staff was still on duty when he reached Scotland Yard the next
morning. The detective-inspector in charge stared at a corpulent man
clad in a Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers of brown tweed, whose heavy
boots clanged along the corridor. The hair, moustache, and eyebrows of
the