roved to be a third return to King's Cross.

Beamish and Bulla were to travel by the 4 p.m., and Willis, carefully
disguised as a deep-sea fisherman, watched them arrive separately, take
their tickets, and enter the train. Beamish travelled first, and Bulla
third, and again the inspector had their tickets examined, and found
they were for London.

Archer was to leave at 5.3, and Willis intended as a precautionary
measure to travel up with him and keep him under observation. Still in
his fisherman's disguise, he took his own ticket, got into the rear of
the train, and kept his eye on the platform until he saw Archer pass,
suitcase and rug in hand. Then cautiously looking out, he watched the
other get into the through coach for King's Cross.

As the train ran past the depot at Ferriby, Willis observed that the
Girondin was not discharging pit-props, but instead was loading casks of
some kind. He had noted on the previous Friday, when he had been in the
neighborhood, that some wagons of these casks had been shunted inside
the enclosure, and were being unloaded by the syndicate's men. The casks
looked like those in which the crude oil for the ship's Diesel engines
arrived, and the fact that she was loading them unemptied-he presumed
them unemptied seemed to indicate that the pumping plant on the wharf
was out of order.

The 5.3 p.m. ran, with a stop at Goole, to Doncaster, where the through
carriage was shunted on to one of the great expresses from the north.
More from force of habit than otherwise, Willis put his head out of the
window at Goole to watch if anyone should leave Archer's carriage. But
no one did.

At Doncaster Willis received something of a shock. As his train drew
into the station another was just coming out, and he idly ran his eye
along the line of coaches. A figure in the corner of a third-class
compartment attracted his attention. It seemed vaguely familiar, but
it was already out of sight before the inspector realized that it was a
likeness to Benson that had struck him. He had not seen the man's face
and at once dismissed the matter from his mind with the careless thought
that everyone has his double. A moment later they pulled up at the
platform.

Here again he put out his head, and it was not long before he saw Archer
alight and, evidently leaving his suitcase and rug to keep his seat,
move slowly down the platform. There was nothing remarkable in this, as
no less than seventeen minutes elapse