beautiful big
British policeman I see out there in Piccadilly."

Tommy hastened to explain.

"We haven't kidnapped your cousin. On the contrary, we're trying to find
her. We're employed to do so."

Mr. Hersheimmer leant back in his chair.

"Put me wise," he said succinctly.

Tommy fell in with this demand in so far as he gave him a guarded
version of the disappearance of Jane Finn, and of the possibility of her
having been mixed up unawares in "some political show." He alluded to
Tuppence and himself as "private inquiry agents" commissioned to find
her, and added that they would therefore be glad of any details Mr.
Hersheimmer could give them.

That gentleman nodded approval.

"I guess that's all right. I was just a mite hasty. But London gets my
goat! I only know little old New York. Just trot out your questions and
I'll answer."

For the moment this paralysed the Young Adventurers, but Tuppence,
recovering herself, plunged boldly into the breach with a reminiscence
culled from detective fiction.

"When did you last see the dece--your cousin, I mean?"

"Never seen her," responded Mr. Hersheimmer.

"What?" demanded Tommy, astonished.

Hersheimmer turned to him.

"No, sir. As I said before, my father and her mother were brother and
sister, just as you might be"--Tommy did not correct this view of their
relationship--"but they didn't always get on together. And when my aunt
made up her mind to marry Amos Finn, who was a poor school teacher out
West, my father was just mad! Said if he made his pile, as he seemed
in a fair way to do, she'd never see a cent of it. Well, the upshot was
that Aunt Jane went out West and we never heard from her again.

"The old man DID pile it up. He went into oil, and he went into steel,
and he played a bit with railroads, and I can tell you he made Wall
Street sit up!" He paused. "Then he died--last fall--and I got the
dollars. Well, would you believe it, my conscience got busy! Kept
knocking me up and saying: What about your Aunt Jane, way out West?
It worried me some. You see, I figured it out that Amos Finn would never
make good. He wasn't the sort. End of it was, I hired a man to hunt her
down. Result, she was dead, and Amos Finn was dead, but they'd left
a daughter--Jane--who'd been torpedoed in the Lusitania on her way to
Paris. She was saved all right, but they didn't seem able to hear of her
over this side. I guessed they weren't hustling any, so I thought I'd
come