e prisoners were ushered into the room, a shame-faced, sullen,
dispirited gang now. Penny and a clerk passed along the line, taking
their names, while Foyle scrutinised their faces. Finally, the
superintendent touched four men on the shoulder one after the other. One
was Jim, the door-keeper; another the red-haired man with the big chest;
the third and fourth two men who had been prominent in the attack. Penny
put a tick against their names, and the whole of the prisoners, many of
whom had broken into voluble protest and appeal, were taken back to the
cells. Foyle had determined to leave the business of charging them to
Green and Penny.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Something of the chagrin caused to Heldon Foyle by the escape of the man
on the barge had vanished with the success of his operations in Smike
Street. If his frontal attack had failed, he had at least achieved
something by his flank movement. The break-up of the gambling-den, too,
was something. Altogether he felt that his injuries were a cheap price
to pay for what had been achieved.

In bare detail he related the sequence of events to Sir Hilary Thornton,
who, with a gloved hand jerking at his grey moustache, listened with
only an occasional observation.

The inevitable crowd of journalists, who had been warned by telephone
from their colleagues at Smike Street, were jumbled in a tiny, tiny
waiting-room when Foyle and his superior reached headquarters. The
superintendent, having changed his attire, made it his first business to
satisfy their clamorous demands by dictating a brief and discreet
account of the raid, to be typed and handed out to them, then with a
head that ached intolerably he forced himself to do some clear thinking.

With the dossier of the case before him, he read and re-read all that
had been gathered by his men and himself since that night when he had
been called from his sleep to find Harry Goldenburg dead. Was there some
point he had overlooked? He knew how fatal it was in the work of
criminal investigation to take anything for granted. Although the main
work of the explorer was now focused on Grell, it was not entirely
certain that he was the murderer. Indeed, strange as his proceedings had
been, there might be some explanation that would account for them. It
might be that after Grell was found the whole investigation would have
to begin again with the scent grown cold. Stranger things had happened.

The superintendent dropped his pap