me unawares. Without the least warning the trio separated, each
hurrying away in a different direction. At this critical juncture a
voice said, right at my ear:

"Shall I stick to Burke?--or follow one of the others?"

I jerked my head round to confront Fanshawe, the man detailed to keep
Burke under surveillance. I had not observed him before--not
surprising, since he had just caught up with me--but I welcomed his
presence now.

"Stay with your own man," I shot at him, and turned to look for the
Jap. He was gone.

To make the account of this discomfiting episode as brief as possible,
I shall say, merely, that out of the three men whom we were watching,
two of them walked away from under our very noses without our having
the slightest idea in which direction they went. How did they do it?
The momentary diversion occasioned by Fanshawe's arrival, the brief
distraction of our attention, had been sufficient. He lost track of
Burke, and I never had so much as another glimpse of the Jap.

We had the assistance of another headquarters man, too. The one for
which I had telephoned showed up immediately after Fanshawe addressed
me. The last-named skurried away to find Burke, while Pennington, my
other colleague, and I devoted our efforts to catching the Jap.

"One of those Japs has been shadowing me all morning, Pennington," I
advised him. "He 's as shifty and evasive as a fox. Fall half a block
behind me, and if he shows up again give me a signal and close in. I
want him."

But he did n't show up.

It was humiliating to be outwitted by the Oriental--it was the second
time for me, too; it would be calamitous to lose Burke. The day
dragged along, and when each succeeding minute brought no news of him
my anxiety increased by leaps and bounds. Before nightfall, every
available man in the department was scouring the city for the
ex-secretary.

Subsequent events, however, showed that we might have spared ourselves
all the trouble and worry; for one more pertinacious even than Fanshawe
clung to Alexander Burke's heels all that day and night.

I found time during my purposeless running to and fro to learn that
Alfred Fluette had arrived at his brokers' offices in Quincy Street
shortly after ten, where he remained until the Board of Trade closed,
and that Genevieve had left on an afternoon train for a brief visit
with relatives in Merton, Ohio. Fluette had failed in his engagement;
Genevieve had kept hers.

S