“Come, by all means,” Quest assented. “I will drive you down in your car, if you like.”
The Professor hurried away to get his coat and hat, and a few minutes later they started off. In Broadway, they left the car at a garage and made their way up a back street, which enabled them to enter the house at the side entrance. They passed upstairs into the sitting-room. Quest fetched the pocket wireless and laid it down on the table. The Professor examined it with interest.
“You are marvellous, my friend,” he declared. “With all these resources of science at your command, it seems incredible that you should be in the position you are.”
Quest nodded coolly.
“I’ll get out of that all right,” he asserted confidently. “The only trouble is that while I am dodging about like this I cannot devote myself properly to the task of running down this fiend of the Hands. Just one moment, Professor, while I send off a message,” he continued, opening the little instrument. “Where are you, Lenora?” he signalled. “Send me word and I will fetch you. I am in my own house for the present. Let me know that you are safe.”
The Professor leaned back, smoking one of Quest’s excellent cigars. He was beginning to show signs of the liveliest interest.
QUEST AND LAURA CHANGE CLOTHES SO THAT QUEST MAY MAKE HIS ESCAPE.
ONE OF THE CLUB’S BUTLERS TURNS IN A FIRE ALARM.
“Quest,” he said, “I wish I could induce you to dismiss this extraordinary supposition of yours concerning my servant Craig. The man has been with me for the best part of twenty years. He saved my life in South America; we have travelled in all parts of the world. He has proved himself to be exemplary, a faithful and devoted servant. I thought it absurd, Mr. Quest, when you were suspected of these crimes. I should think it even more ridiculous to associate Craig with them in any way whatever.”
“Then perhaps you will tell me,” Quest suggested, “where he is now, and why he has gone away? That does not look like complete innocence, does it?”
The Professor sighed.
“Appearances are nothing,” he declared. “Craig is a man of highly nervous susceptibilities. The very idea of being suspected of anything so terrible would be enough to drive him almost out of his mind. I am convinced that we shall find him at home presently, with some reasonable explanation of his absence.”
Quest paced the room for a few moments, moodily.
There was a certain amount of reason in the Professor’s point of view.
“Anyway, I cannot stay here much longer, unless I mean to go back to the Tombs,” he declared.
“Surely,” the Professor suggested, “your innocence will very soon be established?”
“There is one thing which will happen, without a doubt,” Quest replied. “My auto and the chauffeur will be discovered. I have insisted upon enquiries being sent out throughout the State of Connecticut. They tell me, too, that the police are hard on the scent of Red Gallagher and the other man. Unless they get wind of this and sell me purposely, their arrest will be the end of my troubles. To tell you the truth, Professor,” Quest concluded, “it is not of myself I am thinking at all just now. It is Lenora.”
The Professor nodded sympathetically.
“The young lady who shut Craig up in the garage, you mean? A plucky young woman she must be.”
“She has a great many other good qualities besides courage,” Quest declared. “Women have not counted for much with me, Professor, up till now, any more than they have done, I should think, with you, but I tell you frankly, if any one has hurt a hair of that girl’s head I will have their lives, whatever the penalty may be! It is for her sake—to find her—that I broke out of prison and that I am trying to keep free. The wisest thing to do, from my own point of view, would be to give myself up. I can’t bring myself to do that without knowing what has become of her.”
The Professor nodded again.
“A charming and well-bred young woman she seems,” he admitted. “I fear that I should only be a bungler in your profession, Mr. Quest, but if there is anything I can do to help you to discover her whereabouts, you can count upon me. Personally, I am convinced that Craig will return to me with some plausible explanation as to what has happened. In that case he will doubtless bring news of the young lady.”
Quest, for the third or fourth time, moved cautiously towards the window. His expression suddenly changed. He glanced downwards, frowning slightly. An alert light flashed into his eyes.
“They’re after me!” he exclaimed. “Sit still, Professor.”
He darted into his room and reappeared again almost immediately. The Professor gave a gasp of astonishment at his altered appearance. His tweed suit seemed to have been turned inside out. There were no lapels now and it was buttoned up to his neck. He wore a long white apron; a peaked cap and a chin-piece of astonishing naturalness had transformed him into the semblance of a Dutch grocer’s boy.
“I’m off, Professor,” Quest whispered. “You shall hear from me soon. I have not been here, remember!”
He ran lightly down the steps and into the kitchen, picked up a basket, filled it haphazard with vegetables and threw a cloth over the top. Then he made his way to the front door, peered out for a moment, swung through it on to the step, and, turning round, commenced to belabour it with his fist. Two plain-clothes men stood at the end of the street. A police automobile drew up outside the gate. Inspector French, attended by a policeman, stepped out. The former looked searchingly at Quest.
“Well, my boy, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I cannot answer get,” Quest replied, in broken English. “Ten minutes already have I wasted. I have knocked at all the doors.”
French smiled.
“You can hop it, Dutchie,” he advised. “By-the-bye, when was that order for vegetables given?” he added, frowning for a moment.
“It is three times a week the same,” Quest explained, whipping the cloth from the basket. “No word has been sent to alter anything.”
The Inspector pushed him hurriedly in the direction of the street.
“You run along home,” he said, “and tell your master that he had better leave off delivering goods here for the present.”
Quest went off, grumbling. He walked with the peculiar waddle affected by young Dutchmen of a certain class, and was soon out of sight round the corner of the street. French opened the door with a masterkey and secured it carefully, leaving one of his men to guard it. He searched the rooms on the ground floor and finally ascended to Quest’s study. The Professor was still enjoying his cigar.
“Say, where’s Quest?” the Inspector asked promptly.
“Have you let him out already?” the Professor replied, in a tone of mild surprise. “I thought he was in the Tombs prison.”
The Inspector pressed on without answering. Every room in the house was ransacked. Presently he came back to the room where the Professor was still sitting. His usually good-humoured face was a little clouded.
“Professor,” he began—“What’s that, Miles?”
A plain-clothes man from the street had come hurrying into the room.
“Say, Mr. French,” he reported,