etective-Sergeant Sowerby
were joined by a third representative of New Scotland Yard at the
appointed spot by the dock gates. This was Stringer, the detective to
whom was assigned the tracing of the missing Soames; and he loomed up
through the rain-mist, a glistening but dejected figure.

"Any luck?" inquired Sowerby, sepulchrally.

Stringer, a dark and morose looking man, shook his head.

"I've beaten up every 'Chink' in Wapping and Limehouse, I should
reckon," he said, plaintively. "They're all as innocent as babes unborn.
You can take it from me: Chinatown hasn't got a murder on its conscience
at present. BRR! it's a beastly night. Suppose we have one?"

Dunbar nodded, and the three wet investigators walked back for some
little distance in silence, presently emerging via a narrow, dark,
uninviting alleyway into West India Dock Road. A brilliantly lighted
hostelry proved to be their objective, and there, in a quiet corner
of the deserted billiard room, over their glasses, they discussed this
mysterious case, which at first had looked so simple of solution if only
because it offered so many unusual features, but which, the deeper they
probed, merely revealed fresh complications.

"The business of those Fry people, in Scotland, was a rotten
disappointment," said Dunbar, suddenly. "They were merely paid by the
late Mrs. Vernon to re-address letters to a little newspaper shop in
Knightsbridge, where an untraceable boy used to call for them! Martin
has just reported this evening. Perth wires for instructions, but it's a
dead-end, I'm afraid."

"You know," said Sowerby, fishing a piece of cork from the brown froth
of a fine example by Guinness, "to my mind our hope's in Soames; and if
we want to find Soames, to my mind we want to look, not east, but west."

"Hear, hear!" concorded Stringer, gloomily sipping hot rum.

"It seems to me," continued Sowerby, "that Limehouse is about the last
place in the world a man like Soames would think of hiding in."

"It isn't where he'll be THINKING of hiding," snapped Dunbar, turning
his fierce eyes upon the last speaker. "You can't seem to get the idea
out of your head, Sowerby, that Soames is an independent agent. He ISN'T
an independent agent. He's only the servant; and through the servant we
hope to find the master."

"But why in the east-end?" came the plaintive voice of Stringer;
"for only one reason, that I can see--because Max says that there's a
Chinaman in the case."