KINDELL RETURNED TO Scotland Yard to find Superintendent Allenby still sitting at his desk and Mr. Thurlow pacing restlessly across the room. It was as though he had left them for a moment only, but Mr. Thurlow showed how different it had seemed to him by the impatient exclamation: "What a time you've been! And all the while the superintendent here begging me to do nothing, and another hour nearly gone, and Irene - it doesn't bear thinking of what may be happening to her! I can only hope you've done something now!"

"I have a proposal from Professor Blinkwell. He might arrange for her return if he were assured that there would be no unpleasant consequences to follow."

There was satisfaction in the superintendent's eyes, as well as surprise, as he exclaimed: "You really got him to say that! It's the best day's work you've done yet."

"Of course, he didn't put it into those words. He's as slippery as an eel. He said, if he were to negotiate, he would need authority to make terms of that kind."

"Did he say about what? If it were only about the girl's abduction - if that's what's happened - and she were safely returned, we might possibly - I suppose he didn't say anything about drug-smuggling?"

"No. He did mention the Paris murder."

"Did he? That's interesting. It's very near to an admission that there is a connection between the two, even if he himself - - "

"Yes. I saw that. But it might be going a bit too far. There's the Gustav angle. He knows that he's being questioned about the valise, and that he might be implicated in the murder enquiry. There's a tie-up there."

"Never mind that," Irene's father interrupted impatiently. "The question is, what you're going to do now. If you don't do something quickly, I tell you straight that I shall. It's as plain as paint that Blinkwell knows what's up, and it looks to me to be one of those times when a gun talks better than the best policeman I ever met."

"You can be sure," the superintendent answered patiently, "we're not going to lose any time; but, if you think a moment, you will see that Kindell has done a great deal to relieve your anxiety and of course ours - because, after making that offer, Blinkwell will take care that nothing happens to Miss Thurlow which would make it more difficult to carry the bargain through. . . . That is, till he gets our reply. There doesn't seem to me, therefore, to be a special hurry about that. Indeed, unless it should be one which will thoroughly satisfy him, there might be an essential advantage in keeping him in suspense."

He was speaking to Kindell rather than the ambassador as he continued: "We haven't been doing exactly nothing while you've been away. We haven't had any report in yet of the two cars being seen after you left them, though we've got every available man out on that job. But I expect Gustav is being questioned in Paris now, and it's ten to one that he knows something that could put us on the right track. You can bet anything that, if he does, our friends there will find some way of making him talk.

"And we're enquiring about the owners of all the other cars that might have been faked to look like Miss Courtney's. That's an almost certain line of enquiry, though it may not be as quick as the occasion requires.

"Two of the cars of same pattern and colour recently sold were to members of the family of the Earl of Barleigh. There's not much hope there. We already know that one's in a garage in Lancashire. Another's in Belgium. Another belongs to Snacklit, the man who runs the well-known Dogs' Home. There's a chance there, but nobody'd call it good. The Divisional Superintendent says they've never had any complaint against him. Quite the other way. Still, we're taking nothing for granted. We're enquiring about his car now - where it is, and whether it's been out during the day.

"Another car was sold to Sellwell, the stockbroker who failed last August. He's failed twice before, and those little episodes seem to make no difference to his style of living. He's my choice, and an officer will be ringing his bell just about now."

Mr. Thurlow said: "That's what we were arguing when you came in. I say a stockbroker isn't the kind. I don't care whether he's inside the Exchange or out, or whether he fails once a week. The dogs' meat man's my pigeon."

"He isn't a dogs' meat man," the superintendent replied with the calmness that Thurlow had found it so hard to endure; "he keeps a Dogs' Home. Kindness to animals and a............