fession. It served me now. I had worked in the past
with Inspector Dunbar and his subordinate Sergeant Sowerby, and I
determined to trust to my memory of the latter's mode of speech.

I rang up Dr. Stuart and asked for the Inspector, saying Sergeant
Sowerby spoke from Scotland Yard. "Hullo!" he cried, "is that you,
Sowerby?"

"Yes," I replied in Sowerby's voice. "I thought I should find you
there. About the body of Max.."

"Eh!" said Dunbar--"what's that? Max?"

I knew immediately that Paris had not yet wired, therefore I told him
that Paris _had_ done so, and that the disk numbered 49685 was that of
Gaston Max. He was inexpressibly shocked, deploring the rashness of
Max in working alone.

"Come to Scotland Yard," I said, anxious to get him away from the house.

He said he would be with me in a few minutes, and I was racking my
brains for some means of learning what business had taken him to Dr.
Stuart when he gave me the desired information spontaneously.

"Sowerby, listen," said he: "It's 'The Scorpion' case right enough!
That bit of gold found on the dead man is not a cactus stem; it's a
scorpion's tail!"

So! they had found what I had failed to find! It must have been
attached, I concluded, to some inner part of "Le Balafre's" clothing.
There had been no mention of Zara el-Khala; therefore, as I rode
back to my post I permitted myself to assume that she would come
again, since presumably she had thus far failed. I was right.

_Morbleu!_ quick as I was the car was there before me! But I had not
overlooked this possibility and I had dismounted at a good distance
from the house and had left the "Indian" in someone's front garden.
As I had turned out of the main road I had seen Dr. Stuart and
Inspector Dunbar approaching a rank upon which two or three cabs
usually stood.

I watched _la Bell_ Zara enter the house, a beautiful woman most
elegantly attired, and then, even before Chunda Lal had backed the
car into the lane I was off ... to the spot at which I had abandoned
my motor bicycle. In little more than half an hour I had traversed
London, and was standing in the shadow of that high, blank wall to
which I have referred as facing a row of wooden houses in a certain
street adjoining Limehouse Causeway.

You perceive my plan? I was practically sure of the street; all I had
to learn was which house sheltered "The Scorpion"!

I had already suspected that this night was to be for me an unlucky
night. _Nom d