a little sheepish.

"What's wrong?" French demanded.

"He's gone off," was the unwilling reply. "I guess that chap's given us
the slip."

"Speak up," French insisted.

"The only place," the man went on, "we hadn't our eyes glued on, was the
front door. He must have come out through that. There's been a motor truck
with one or two queer-looking chaps in it, at the corner of the avenue
there for the last ten minutes. I'd just made up my mind to stroll round
and see what it was up to when Jim, who was on the other side, shouted
out. A man jumped up into it and they made off at once."

"Could he have come from this house?" French asked sternly.

"I guess, if he'd come out from the front door, he might just have done
it," the man admitted.

Quest and the Inspector exchanged glances.

"He's done us!" Quest muttered,--"done us like a couple of greenhorns!"

The Inspector's rubicund countenance was white with fury. His head kept
turning in the direction of Laura, to whom the Professor was busy
rendering first aid.

"If I never take another job on as long as I live," he declared, "I'll
have that fellow before I'm through!"

2.

The Professor roused himself from what had apparently been a very gloomy
reverie.

"Well," he announced, "I must go home. It has been very kind of you, Mr.
Quest, to keep me here for so long."

Quest glanced at the clock.

"Don't hurry, Mr. Ashleigh," he said. "We may get some news at any moment.
French has a dozen men out on the search and he has promised to ring me up
immediately he hears anything."

The Professor sighed.

"A man," he declared, "who for twenty years can deceive his master as
utterly and completely as Craig has done me, who is capable of such
diabolical outrages, and who, when capture stares him in the face, is
capable of an escape such as he made to-day, is outside the laws of
probability. Personally, I do not believe that I shall ever again see the
face of my servant, any more than that you, Quest, will entirely solve the
mystery of these murders and the theft of the Rheinholdt jewels."

Lenora, who, with her hat on, was packing a small bag at the other end of
the room, glanced up for a moment.

[Illustration: QUEST IS MYSTIFIED AT FINDING THE JEWELS IN THE BLACK BOX,
WHICH WAS ON THE FLOOR.]

[Illustration: "SURE AN' ME NAME'S NOT CRAIG--IT'S MARTY O'TOOLE, SIR."
THEY HAD FOOLED THE CRIMINOLOGIST.]

"The man is a demon!" she exclaimed. "He would have sac