up
Inspector Weymouth.

Smith had not been to Scotland Yard, nor had they received any message
from him. Perhaps it would appear that there was little cause for alarm
in this, but I, familiar with my friend's punctual and exact habits,
became strangely uneasy. I did not wish to make myself ridiculous,
but growing restlessness impelled me to institute inquiries regarding
the cabman who had driven my friend. The result of these was to
increase rather than to allay my fears.

The man was a stranger to the hall-porter, and he was not one of the
taximen who habitually stood upon the neighboring rank; no one seemed
to have noticed the number of the cab.

And now my mind began to play with strange doubts and fears. The driver,
I recollected, had been a small, dark man, possessing remarkably
well-cut olive-hued features. Had he not worn spectacles he would
indeed have been handsome, in an effeminate fashion.

I was almost certain, by this time, that he had not been an Englishman;
I was almost certain that some catastrophe had befallen Smith. Our
ceaseless vigilance had been momentarily relaxed--and this was the
result!

At some large bank branches there is a resident messenger. Even
granting that such was the case in the present instance, I doubted if
the man could help me, unless, as was possible, he chanced to be
familiar with my friend's appearance, and had actually seen him there
that day. I determined, at any rate, to make the attempt; reentering
the call-box, I asked for the bank's number.

There proved to be a resident messenger, who, after a time, replied to
my call. He knew Nayland Smith very well by sight, and as he had been
on duty in the public office of the bank at the time that Smith should
have arrived, he assured me that my friend had not been there that day!

"Besides, sir," he said, "you say he came to deposit valuables of some
kind here?"

"Yes, yes!" I cried eagerly.

"I take all such things down on the lift to the vaults at night, sir,
under the supervision of the assistant manager--and I can assure you
that nothing of the kind has been left with us to-day."

I stepped out of the call-box unsteadily. Indeed, I clutched at the
door for support.

"What is the meaning of Si-Fan?" Detective-sergeant Fletcher had asked
that morning. None of us could answer him; none of us knew. With a
haze seeming to dance between my eyes and the active life in the lobby
before me, I realized that the Si-Fan--that