er--Albert--has gone down to Cannon Street to see if
he can trace the driver of the taxi-cab in which Rayner and Miss Slade
drove away from there last night."

"He'll do no harm in trying to find that out," observed the chief. "But
I should like to see him--I want to ask some questions about the man who
joined those two after dinner at Cannon Street last night, and the other
man whom he saw them take up near Liverpool Street Station. Will he keep
himself in touch with your warehouse in Gresham Street?"

"Sure to," answered Appleyard.

"Then just telephone to your people there, and tell them to tell him, if
he comes in asking for you, to come along and seek you here," said the
chief. "I'm afraid I can't spare either you or Mr. Allerdyke, for your
joint information'll be wanted presently for these warrants, and when
we've got them I want you to go with me--both of you--to the Pompadour."

"You're going to search?" asked Allerdyke when Appleyard had gone to the
telephone. "You think you may find something--there?"

"There's enough evidence to justify a search," answered the chief.
"Naturally we want to know all we can. But I should say that if she's
mixed up with a gang, and if they've got those jewels through her--as
seems uncommonly likely--she'll have been ready for a start at any
minute, and the probability is we'll find nothing to help us. The great
thing, of course, will be to get hold of the woman herself. It's a most
unfortunate thing that Albert Gaffney was stopped from following that
cab, last night--I've no opinion, Mr. Allerdyke, of your amateur
detective as a rule, but from Mr. Appleyard's account of him, this one
seems to have done very well. If we only knew where those two went--"

Appleyard presently came back from the telephone with a face alive with
fresh news.

"Albert Gaffney's at the warehouse now," he announced. "I've just had a
word with him. He found the taxi-cab driver an hour ago, and he got the
information he wanted. And I'm afraid it's--nothing!"

"What is it, anyhow?" asked the chief, with a smile. "Perhaps Albert
Gaffney doesn't know its value."

"The man drove them, all four, to the corner of Whitechapel Church," said
Appleyard. "There he set them down, and there he left them. That's all."

"Well, that's something, anyway," remarked the chief. "It carries the
thing on another stage. Now we'll leave that and attend to our own
business."

The Pompadour Private Hotel, like most estab