as soon as you'd gone," answered Copplestone.

"Ten minutes ago!" sighed Spurge. "Guv'nor--they've done us! They're off!
I see it--she must ha' caught sight o' me, nosing round, and she came
here and gave the others the office, and they bucked out at the back.
The back, Guv'nor! and Lord bless you, at the back o' this shanty there's
a perfect rabbit-warren o' places--more by token, they call it the
Warren. If they've got in there, why, all the police in Norcaster'll
never find 'em--leastways, I mean, to speak truthful, not without a deal
o' trouble."

"What about upstairs?" asked Copplestone.

"Upstairs, now?" said Spurge with a doubtful glance at the ramshackle
stairway. "Lord, mister!--I don't believe nobody could get up them
stairs! No--they've hooked it through the back here, into the Warren. And
once in there--"

He ended with an eloquent gesture, and dismounting from his perch made
his way along the passage to a door which opened into the shed. Thence he
looked out on the quay, and along the crowded maze of Scarvell's Cut.

"Here's some of 'em, anyway, guv'nor," he announced. "I see Mr. Vickers
and t'other London gentleman, and the old Admiral, at all events. There
they are--getting out of a motor at the end. But go to meet 'em, Mr.
Copplestone, while I keep my eye on this here tug and its skipper."

Copplestone elbowed his way through the crowd until he met Sir Cresswell
and his two companions. All three were eager and excited: Copplestone
could only respond to their inquiries with a gloomy shake of the head.

"We seem to have the devil's own luck!" he growled dismally. "Spurge and
I spotted Andrius by sheer accident. He was on a North Sea tug, or
trawler, along the quay here. Then Spurge ran off to summon you. While
he was away Miss Chatfield appeared--"

"Addie Chatfield!" exclaimed Vickers.

"Exactly. And that of course," continued Copplestone, glancing at
Gilling, "that without doubt--in my opinion, anyway--explains those
elegant footprints up at the tower. Addie Chatfield, I tell you! She
passed me as I was hiding at the entrance to an alley down the Cut here,
and she went into an old sail-loft, outside which the tug I spoke of is
moored, and into which Andrius had strolled a minute or two previously.
But--neither she nor Andrius are there now. They've gone! And Spurge says
that at the back of this quay there's a perfect rabbit-warren of courts
and alleys, and if--or, rather as they've escaped into