Whether Mullen intended to abandon or to carry out the plan he had formed for making his escape by the help of his sister, I had no means of knowing. If he suspected that his letters had been intercepted, he was tolerably sure to abandon the arrangement, or at all events to change the scene of operations. But if he was unaware of the fact that I had taken up the thread which poor Green had dropped, it was possible that he might assume his secret to be safe now Green was satisfactorily disposed of, and might carry out his original plan, in which event he would walk of his own accord into the trap which I was preparing for him. In any case I should be doing right in making inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne and their yacht, and with this end in view I purchased a copy of the current “Yachting Register.” Turning to the letter B in the list of owners, I found that Mr. Stanley Scott Burgoyne’s club was the Royal London, and that he had two boats, one a big steam yacht called the “Fiona,” and the other a little five-tonner named the “Odd Trick.” It was no doubt in the former that Mr. and Mrs. Burgoyne had gone to Norway and by means of which Mullen was to fly the country, and it was probably to the latter that Mrs. Burgoyne had referred in her letter. No one can be led to talk “shop” more readily than your enthusiastic yachtsman, and it did not require much diplomacy on my part to ascertain, by means of a visit to the Royal London Club House in Savile Row--in company with a member--that Mr. Burgoyne’s little cruiser was laid up at Gravesend, in charge of a man named Gunnell. Him I accordingly visited, under the pretext of wanting to buy a yacht, and after some conversation I remarked casually-- “By-the-bye, I think you have my friend Mr. Stanley Burgoyne’s five-tonner, the ‘Odd Trick,’ laid up here, haven’t you?” “I did have, sir,” was the reply, “but Mr. Burgoyne he telegraphed that I was to let his brother-in-law, Mr. Cross, have the boat out. That there’s the telegram wot you see slipped in behind the olm’nack.” For the second time in the course of this curious enterprise the information I was in need of seemed to come in search of me instead of my having to go in search of it. I had felt when I started out to pursue my inquiries about Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Burgoyne, by interviewing the waterman Gunnell, that it was quite possible I might learn something of importance, but I had not expected to strike the trail red-hot, and so soon, for “Cross,” as the reader may perhaps remember, was the name by which Mullen was known to his family. “Mullen” had been used only in connection with the conspiracy. Lest the man should see by my face how important was the information he had let drop, I stooped as if to flick a splash of mud from my trousers-leg before replying. “Ah, yes,” I said at length, straightening myself and bending forward indolently to look at the telegram, which I read aloud.