oat and tugged out his watch.

"Here's a light," said Rogers, and shone the ray of an electric torch
upon the watch-face.

"A quarter-to-three," grumbled Stringer. "There may be murder going on,
and here we are."...

A sudden clamor arose upon the shore, near by; a sound as of
sledge-hammers at work. But above this pierced shrilly the call of a
police whistle.

"What's that?" snapped Rogers, leaping up. "Stand by there!"

The sound of the whistle grew near and nearer; then came a voice--that
of Sergeant Sowerby--hailing them through the fog.

"DUNBAR'S IN! But the gang have escaped! They've got to a motor launch
twenty yards down, on the end of the creek"...

But already the police boat was away.

"Let her go!" shouted Rogers--"close inshore! Keep a sharp lookout for a
cutter, boys!"

Stringer, aroused now to excitement, went blundering forward through
the fog, joining the men in the bows. Four pairs of eyes were peering
through the mist, the damnable, yellow mist that veiled all things.

"Curse the fog!" said Stringer; "it's just our damn luck!"

"Cutter 'hoy!" bawled a man at his side suddenly, one of the river
police more used to the mists of the Thames. "Cutter on the port bow,
sir!"

"Keep her in sight," shouted Rogers from the stern; "don't lose her for
your lives!"

Stringer, at imminent peril of precipitating himself into the water, was
craning out over the bows and staring until his eyes smarted.

"Don't you see her?" said one of the men on the lookout. "She carries no
lights, of course, but you can just make out the streak of her wake."

Harder, harder stared Stringer, and now a faint, lighter smudge in the
blackness, ahead and below, proclaimed itself the wake of some rapidly
traveling craft.

"I can hear her motor!" said another voice.

Stringer began, now, also to listen.

Muffled sirens were hooting dismally all about Limehouse Reach, and he
knew that this random dash through the night was fraught with extreme
danger, since this was a narrow and congested part of the great highway.
But, listen as he might, he could not detect the sounds referred to.

The brazen roar of a big steamer's siren rose up before them. Rogers
turned the head of the cutter sharply to starboard but did not slacken
speed. The continuous roar grew deeper, grew louder.

"Sharp lookout there!" cried the inspector from the stern.

Suddenly over their bows uprose a black mass.

"My God!" cried Stringer, and fel