as between two of these, and a
flight of stairs led down to the basement. Here were six sets of
apartments, with windows giving out to the narrow areas which ran
parallel to the side streets on either side of the block.

The centre of the basement consisted of a large concrete store-room,
about which were set little cubicles or cellars in which the tenants
stored such of their baggage, furniture, etc., as they did not need. It
was possible, he discovered, to pass from the corridor of the basement
flat, into the store room, and out through a door at the back of the
building into a small courtyard. Access to the street was secured through
a fairly large door, placed there for the convenience of tenants who
wished to get their coal and heavy stores delivered. In the street behind
the block of flats was a mews, consisting of about a dozen shut-up
stables, all of which were rented by a taxicab company, and now used as a
garage.

If the murder was committed in the flat, it was by this way the body
would have been carried to the mews, and here, too, a car would attract
little attention. Inquiries made amongst employees of the cab company,
some of whom occupied little rooms above their garages, elicited the
important information that the car had been seen in the mews on the night
of the murder--a fact, it seemed, which had been overlooked in the
preliminary police investigations.

The car was a two-seater Daimler with a yellow body and a hood. This was
an exact description of Thornton Lyne's machine which had been found near
the place where his body was discovered. The hood of the car was up when
it was seen in the mews and the time apparently was between ten and
eleven on the night of the murder. But though he pursued the most
diligent inquiries, Tarling failed to discover any human being who had
either recognised Lyne or observed the car arrive or depart.

The hall porter of the flats, on being interviewed, was very emphatic
that nobody had come into the building by the main entrance between the
hours of ten and half-past. It was possible, he admitted, that they could
have come between half-past ten and a quarter to eleven because he had
gone to his "office," which proved to be a stuffy little place under the
stairs, to change from his uniform into his private clothes before going
home. He was in the habit of locking the front door at eleven o'clock.
Tenants of the mansions had pass-keys to the main door, and of all that