An hour later, having bidden goodbye to Naughton Jones, who, however, did not take the slightest notice and remained sitting back in the armchair with his eyes closed as if he had fallen asleep, Larose was again seated in Sir Arnold’s car and being driven back to the Abbey.

“I did not intrude upon you,” said the surgeon, “for Henrik told me Mr. Jones was in there, too.” He smiled. “Our learned friend I know is very temperamental, and if I had disturbed him, without being sent for, it is quite probable I might have only received a snub for my pains. A very remarkable man, Mr. Jones, but he’s most touchy sometimes.”

“Yes, and he’s not in too good a mood this morning,” said Larose, “but he’s quite a genius in his way, and his kind often want a lot of handling.”

“So we found,” commented Sir Arnold dryly. “He was nearly dead that morning when I got him into the Cottage Hospital in Burnham Market, but within a few hours he was laying down the law as if I were the patient and he the medical man. In a couple of days, too, his room had become almost like a post office, with the number of telegrams that he was sending and receiving.”

“One of the big arteries was severed, wasn’t it?” asked Larose.

Sir Arnold smiled again. “Well, hardly,” he replied, “but I had to exaggerate his injury in order to keep him quiet. He was furious that I wouldn’t allow him to get up the next day, and demanded stout and oysters to pick up his strength.”

They had almost reached the bitumen when suddenly a dilapidated-looking car turned into the marsh road and pulled up, almost blocking the narrow way. A burly-looking man sprang out and held up his hand for them to stop.

“Hullo!” exclaimed the surgeon quietly, “but this gentleman doesn’t look too prepossessing, and in these days of violence and abduction, we’d better be a little careful.”

“Oh! it’s all right,” replied Larose quickly. “I guess who he is. I recognise that car. It’s a four-cylinder Goat and belongs to Naughton Jones.”

The man advanced to speak to them, and, as Sir Arnold had said, his appearance was certainly not of a reassuring nature. He was big and thick set, with a big square head and small, blinking, pugnacious-looking eyes. His ears were thick and large and stood out, almost at right angles.

“Beg pardon, gentlemen,” he said touching his cap, “but is this the road for Holkham Bay?”

Larose repressed a smile. “Yes,” he replied, “but what do you want there? There’s not much to see.”

The man jerked his thumb back in the direction of the car. “But me and my mate are going to do a bit of shrimping.”

“Well, you won’t get any,” said Larose, “for it’s high tide.”

“We’ll have a go, anyhow,” said the man gruffly. ‘“We got the nets,” and he turned to go back to his car.

“One moment,” called out Larose, putting his head out of the window. “Are you by any chance the gentleman who is looking for Mr. Naughton Jones!”

The man’s eyes twinkled suspiciously. “Jones! Jones!” he exclaimed, “never heard of him.”

But the face of Larose suddenly assumed a startled look. “Good gracious!” he called out, “but aren’t you ‘The Limehouse Bruiser’ who once knocked out Stammering Jack in the tenth round? Great James! I’m sure you are. I remember you distinctly.”

The man’s face became at once a study, with pride and suspicion struggling for the mastery. He blinked his eyes violently, he smiled and he swallowed hard several times. Then he beamed all over. “Yes, guv’nor. You’ve placed me. I got him square on the jaw.”

Larose laughed merrily. “It’s all right, my friend, quite all right, and you’ll find Mr. Jones up there, waiting for you both. I’ve just come from him and he told me he was expecting you. I know all about you.”

The man touched his cap once more and grinned. “Beg pardon, sir, again,” he said, “but you see we has to be careful, and it was no good us throwing our names about, was it?”

“Certainly not,” replied Larose, “you were most discreet. Now, you go up along this road and it’s the only house you come to, on the right. You’ll find the door open and Mr. Jones inside.” He laughed again. “You tell him Mr. Larose directed you. Remember the name, Mr. Gilbert Larose.”

The man’s jaw dropped. “Larose!” he ejaculated, “not the ‘tec!”

“Yes,” smiled Larose, “but don’t worry. I’m not after you, and I wish both you and your pal good luck. Good-bye and hurry up, for you know Mr. Jones never likes to be kept waiting.”

“Quite an amusing little comedy,” remarked Sir Arnold as they speeded along, “and it was funny to watch the man’s face.” He smiled. “All you great men seem to like to make yourselves known to one another.”

“Yes,” smiled back Larose, “but it wasn’t exactly vanity on my part, this time. Jones says he and I are rivals, and I wanted to pull his leg and let him know I should recognise his assistants now, when I see them.” He changed the conversation. “But tell me, doctor, what is Sodium Evipan used for?”

“It’s a wonderful new anaesthetic,” replied Sir Arnold, “and we expect great things from it. You don’t inhale it like you do chloroform or ether, but it is injected into you with a hypodermic syringe, and you go off almost at once into profound unconsciousness. It is very rapid in its action and the unconsciousness lasts for from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour.”

“Then you go off quicker than when you are given ether or chloroform?” asked Larose.

“Good gracious, yes,” replied Sir Arnold. “You don’t know what’s happening after about a minute.” He looked curiously at the detective. “But what are your plans now, Mr. Larose? Remember you are not too strong yet and must go easy for a few days.”

“I’m hiring a car from Hunstanton,” replied Larose, “and with two good private-clothes men who are coming from Norwich to help me, am starting off about one o’clock. I have no idea yet in which direction I am going, but with any luck”— he gritted his teeth together —“I’ll be hot on the trail of those devils within twenty-four hours.”

“Then you found something just now in that house that may help you?” asked Sir Arnold eagerly.

“Yes, several things, I think,” nodded Larose, “but I shan’t know what they are worth for a few hours.”

The surgeon looked very astonished. “And do you really mean to tell me,” he asked, “that you have any hope of finding where Lady Ardane is being held prisoner, say, within a week from now?”

“Most certainly, yes,” replied Larose, “and perhaps within half that time. That’s my trade, Sir Arnold”— he frowned —“and if I know anything of Naughton Jones, it’ll be a close thing between us, who finds where she is first.”

“Then I’ll wait on at the Abbey,” said Sir Arnold. “I was intending to return to London to-night, but as you seem so confident, I’ll remain on for a few days.” He shook his head. “But you’ll have to be a quick mover, my friend, for those wretches have had a long start.”

And certainly Larose was a quick mover, for before half-past one he came out of the Hunstanton Public Library and proceeded at once to give some very definite instructions to two men who were standing by a motor bicycle and side-car outfit.

“It’s at Cambridge you’ll have to ring me,” he said sharply, “at the Bull Hotel, there. Ring up at nine, and if you don’t get me then, ring up at every succeeding half-hour until you catch me. Now you know what you’ve got to do. It’s very simple. You are to keep to the main road and enquire at every garage, beginning at those in this town, if, since Monday week last, they have sold to any driver of a six cylinder grey-colored Jehu, two valve cap covers. The tyres he had lost them from were the off-side back one, and the one on the spare wheel, but you needn’t make any account of that. You want to know anyone with a Jehu who has purchased two valve-cap covers. If any garage can inform you, you are not to approach the man who has bought them, but tactfully find out all you can about him. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” replied one of the men, “if we locate him, we are to do nothing until we have spoken to you.”

“And if the garages can’t tell you,” went on Larose, “get a list from them of all their clients who possess grey Jehu cars.” He made a grimace. “Unhappily grey Jehus are pretty plentiful, and there are a lot about, but the driver you want to know about is a fairly tall man who stoops a bit, over six feet I should say, has a long face with a biggish nose, and he sometimes wears a cap with car flaps tied under his chin. The two back tyres on his car are nearly new ones, and so were probably both bought at the same time, so you are to ask everywhere if they have any record of two such tyres being sold recently. Now is everything quite clear!”

“Yes,” replied the man who had spoken before, “and the number plates of his car are V.F. 2113.”

“But you can’t count on that, Hale,” said Larose sharply, “for, as I have told you, that number does not belong to him, and he may have others that he makes use of as well. I can’t tell you anything more, except that the first part of his journey from where he had set out to come to Holkham Bay was a muddy one, for scraping at the mud under the car that day, there was first the little mud from the marsh crossing, then a hard layer that had evidently become dried from coming a good few miles over the bitumen, and then underneath that, much moister mud again. Ah! one thing more, I noticed three dried dragon-flies stuck in the combs of his radiator, so he probably comes from where there is swampy ground.” He waved his hand. “Now off you go and good luck to us all.”

The detective was in quite a cheerful frame of mind as he drove along towards King’s Lynn. “A glorious day,” he told himself, “and I’ve a lovely drive before me. I shall pass through these beautiful little English villages and through these quaint, old-fashioned market towns. I shall touch the lonely Fen country, once all marsh and swamp and where the great Hereward the Wake fought so valiantly that the soil of England should not pass under the Norman yoke. Then I shall come to the wonderful cathedral city of Ely, and finally I shall reach Cambridge, with its old world colleges and churches, hundreds and hundreds of years old.”

He sighed. “But I’m not going all this way to see the beautiful countryside or the wonder of man’s craft down the ages. I’m on a much more prosaic mission.” His face hardened and took a solemn look. “I am wanting to get upon the track of these wretches whose trade is murder and violence, and probably law-breaking of other kinds. It’s a gang we’re after, too, I’m sure, and although I am taking this long journey to Cambridge, I don’t for a moment believe they have their hiding place within many miles of there. When I went over that Jehu car, the petrol that had been used, assuming even that the tank had been full when the journey started, couldn’t have taken it a yard over fifty miles, and Jones agreed with me, too.”

He shook his head. “No, they don’t live anywhere near Cambridge, but all the same, with any luck, I’m going to pick up the trail there, and by tomorrow I shall probably be back, close here again. There were quite a number of things that struck me in that house, but that one in the Medical Journal was, I am sure, the most important.”

He looked at his watch and at once proceeded to reduce his speed. “No, I’ve plenty of time, for the gentleman I am going to interview in Cambridge is not likely to be home much before his dinner hour, and I’ve only seventy-five miles to go.” He drew a deep breath. “Now, let me reason it all over again and see if there’s anything glaringly wrong with my argument. A Dr. R.D. Smith, of King’s Parade, Cambridge, writes what is probably an intelligent and illuminative article on ‘Hay Fever,’ and it duly appears in the official organ of his profession. Naturally then, he expects to derive some credit from it, not only from his professional brethren, but also from certain of his patients as well. So imagine his disgust, when, with his name a very common one, the journal gives him a wrong initial and prints ‘R.B.’ instead of ‘R.D.’ Hay fever is not a rare complaint by any means, and several of his patients having probably suffered from it, it is quite natural he would like them to read his article. But he couldn’t lend it to them with the initials all wrong, so before doing so, he rectifies the mistake and with his pen puts a D. instead of the B.”

He paused for quite a long time to go back over his deductions and weigh up whether they seemed feasible or far fetched. At length he went on. “Then assuming that it is Dr. Smith himself who has rectified the mistake in his own copy of the journal — and by no stretch of the imagination can I conceive of anyone else taking the trouble to do it — all I have to find out is to whom he lent the journal, and in that way I ought to soon get at this man Prince.” He shook his head. “But if it were not for the altering of that initial my whole theory would fall to the ground, for undoubtedly this issue of the journal was in the possession of these men, not because of that article on ‘Hay Fever’— but because of that one on ‘Narcotics.’ The page there was well thumbed and ‘Sodium Evipan’ had been underlined.” He shook his head again. “Yes, they might have bought a copy of the journal for themselves.”

His face brightened. “But no, I am not altogether coming to Cambridge because of this medical journal, for I was intending to go there in any case. Those sandwiches that I found in the car were made of pate-defoie-gras, and that was a good brown sherry in the pocket flask, and I thought of some big cities at once when I saw them. Those sorts of things are not to be bought in little country towns, and so Norwich and Cambridge leapt instantly into my mind, for they are the nearest places where they could be obtained. It was the same, too, this morning, directly I saw that expensive burgundy had been drunk. Shopping in a big city somewhere, where all kinds of expensive luxuries are on sale.”

He pressed down upon the accelerator. “Yes, upon second thoughts, I’d better hurry up a bit, so that if the doctor isn’t at home, I can go the round of the wine merchants at once.”

He arrived at Cambridge a little after four, and learning that the doctor was out and that his evening surgery hours were from seven to nine, gave his card to the maid who had answered the door, and asked her to inform her master that he would be much obliged if he could spare him a few minutes just before seven. He was not coming as a patient, he said, and would return at ten minutes before the hour. The girl regarded the card with very curious eyes and replied that she thought the arrangement would be quite all right.

Then he inquired of a postman whom he met which was the best firm of wine merchants in the city, and was directed to one in Sydney street. Asking to see the chief one in authority there, he was shown into the manager’s office, and producing his card, was at once treated with the utmost respect.

“What I want to know, sir,” he said, “is whether you have made a sale, lately, of any pint bottles of Chambertin 1904, accompanied perhaps at the same time by some bottles of brown sherry, and if you have done so, to whom you sold the wine.”

The manager smiled. “Happily, sir,” he replied, “we have a good connection and are very often disposing of the wines you mention. Now, can you give me any approximate date?”

“Unfortunately I can’t,” replied Larose, “but I am very interested in an unknown party, a tall man, with a rather long face and big nose, who has been purchasing these wines, and I want to find out who he is.”

The manager pursed up his lips and looked very doubtful. “I may be able to give you the names of a score of persons who have bought them,” he said, “and yet”— he looked more hopeful —“if this party you want bought the two wines at the same time, I may perhaps be able to help you, and particularly so, as you say the burgundy was in pint bottles. The still vintage wines are nearly always preferred in quarts.” He rose up from his chair. “I’ll go and look through our sales books.”

He left the room and was absent for quite a quarter of an hour. Then he returned with a big ledger under his arm. “You are lucky,” he smiled, “I can give you the exact date.” He pointed to a page in the book. “See, on September 9 we sold a case of Chambertin pints and six bottles of brown sherry and a bottle of 1906 brandy, all to the same person.”

“Who was he?” asked the detective eagerly, thrilled to the core that he had hit the bull’s-eye with the first shot. His hopes, however, were immediately dashed to zero when the manager replied, “Ah! there I’m afraid my services end, for the sale was a cash one, and in consequence there is no name of the purchaser recorded in our book.”

“And there is no possibility of finding out?” asked Larose with a choke in his voice.

“None whatever,” replied the manager. “Ah! wait a moment. Our cellar man may know something about him, for he will have delivered the wine.” He touched a bell upon his desk and a clerk immediately appeared. “Send William to me,” he said.

A minute or two later a stout, heavy man in a big leather apron appeared, and the manager put the question to him as to whether he remembered the sale.

The man thought for a moment and then nodded his head. “Yes, sir, I do,” he said. “I carried everything out to a car, and packed it in for the gentleman.”

“Who was he?” asked the manager. “Do you know?”

“No, sir, he was quite a stranger to me.” The man smiled. “But he gave me a shilling and was very particular how the Chambertin was put in the car and asked me how long he ought to let it rest after he’d got it home. He said it was going to have a good shaking, for he’d be travelling nearly forty miles.”

“What was the car like?” asked Larose.

“Couldn’t tell you, sir,” was the reply, “except that there was a lot of mud about, because I remember having to clean up my apron afterwards.”

That was all the information the detective could extract, and then, proceeding to the Bull Hotel, he put in a good hour studying a big ordnance map that he had purchased in Hunstanton.

At a quarter to seven he presented himself at the doctor’s house, and was at once shown into the surgery, where the doctor himself was seated at his desk. The doctor was a round-faced, plump little man, beaming good humor and good nature, and with a merry twinkle in his eye. He looked about fifty-five years of age.

“Well, what have you found out about me, sir?” he asked at once, wagging his finger playfully at the detective. “Oh! yes, I’ve heard about you, Mr. Larose, and know your favorite hobby is murder work.” He pretended to look very frightened. “But in my case I can inform you straightaway that you’ll need a perfect host of exhumation orders to secure any conviction, for everyone for whose death I am responsible is well buried under the ground.”

Larose smiled back. “It’s not quite as bad as that yet, doctor,” he replied, “and so far we’ve not had too many complaints about you up at the Yard. I’ve come about that article of yours on ‘Hay Fever’ that was published in the issue of the ‘British Medical Journal’ of September 4.”

“But that’s not a crime!” exclaimed the doctor instantly. “An indiscretion, if you like, but certainly no indictable offence!” His face sobered down. “But what do you mean, sir?”

“Now have you got a copy of the journal, with your article in it?” asked Larose.

“Certainly,” was the reply, and the doctor at once reached forward and picked one off the desk. “Here you are and there is the offending article.” The hopes of Larose dropped again, but he was in part reassured, when he saw the initial had been corrected as before. “But is this the original copy that was sent you,” he asked, “for, of course, I presume you are a member of the British Medical Association and receive one every week.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, I am,” he said, and then he added, looking very surprised, “no, this is not the copy that was sent me. Someone stole that from my waiting-room and I had to buy another.”

Larose put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat, and plucking out the journal he had brought with him, handed it dramatically across to the doctor.

“Then is this your original copy?” he asked, and he saw the doctor’s jaw drop, and his brows contract, as his eyes fell upon the correction under the title of his article.

“My oath, it is!” he gasped, “but how the very devil did it come into your hands, and bring you all this way to question me?”

“The position, Doctor, is like this,” replied Larose. “We are after some very bad men, and we should have got them about a week back up Hunstanton way if they had not suddenly become aware that we had located them — and bolted away. Well, in the house they had been living in, we came across this journal, and thinking it must be yours, I have come over eighty miles today to speak to you.”

“How extraordinary!” exclaimed the doctor, “but there is no doubt this is the journal that was stolen from me.” He leant back in his chair and reflected. “Now let me see. The journal is published on the Saturday and I always get it on the Monday.” He spoke very slowly. “Then it was probably on the Wednesday that I put it on the waiting room table, and on the Friday when I went to look for it, it had gone. One of the patients must have taken it.”

“Well, can you remember among your patients a tall man, with a long face and rather big nose,” asked Larose, “who was probably suffering from some form of chest trouble about that time?”

The doctor shook his head slowly and then smiled. “I see from sixty to seventy people a day sometimes, and I can’t remember them all. No, I have no recollection of any such man.”

“But you are quite correct as to the date, doctor,” said Larose. “The journal was taken on the Thursday, for on that day, September 9, we have found out that this man, one of t............