As for that precious rascal, I need scarcely say that I placed no reliance whatever upon what he said, and had seriously considered whether the story of his giving Jeanes the letter on the stairs, and then shadowing his customer to the hotel might not be an entire fabrication. I did not for a moment believe that he knew who Jeanes really was, for had he done so he would, I felt sure, have lost no time in securing the reward by handing the fugitive over to the police. But I quite recognised the possibility of his being in Jeanes’s pay, and had seriously asked myself whether the statement that Jeanes would not be having any more letters addressed to the shop, and would not be visiting Stanby again, might not be a ruse to get me out of the way. But that the Professor’s surprise and dismay when he found Jeanes gone from the hotel were genuine, no one who had witnessed them could have doubted, and as the circumstances generally tended to confirm his story, I was forced to the conclusion that he had, in this instance at all events, told the truth. In that case I should be wasting time by remaining longer at Stanby; so after arranging with the Professor that if Jeanes called again, or if any other letters arrived for him, the word “News” should at once be telegraphed to an address which I gave, I packed my bag and caught the next train to town. Mullen had called “check” at Stanby, it is true, but I was not without another move, by means of which I hoped eventually to “mate” him, and what that move was, the reader who remembers the contents of the intercepted letters will readily surmise. In one of those letters the person to whom it was addressed was told that the steam yacht, by means of which he was to escape would be lying just off the boat-builder’s yard where the little yacht was laid up. Any one who did not know from whom the letter was, or under what circumstances it had been written, would not be any the wiser for this piece of information. But to one who knew, as I did, that the writer was the wife of Mr. Stanley Burgoyne, it would not be a difficult thing to ascertain the name of any small yacht of which that gentleman was the owner, and the place where it was likely to be laid up.