He telephoned to have the information sent up to him. “The last lap!” he thought contentedly, as he pictured the arrival of the steamer at Manáos and the descent of the fugitives on to the wharf into the clutches of the waiting police. And for him it would mean not only the completion of a peculiarly worrying and difficult case, but undoubted kudos, if not actual promotion. CHAPTER XVIII THE S. S. “ENOCH” IN the vast organisation of Scotland Yard the indexing of information on every available subject has been brought to something more than a fine art. If French had wished to know the number of inhabitants of Prague, the favourite recreations of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, or the width of the Ganges at Allahabad, some notes or books of reference would immediately have been forthcoming which would have fully supplied the desired information. How much more when the question was merely one of trains and steamers. He had not long to wait for an answer to his telephone, and this revealed the fact that the Booth liner _Enoch_, which had left Liverpool on the previous afternoon, called at Havre, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, and Para, before completing her voyage to Manáos by a sail of a thousand miles up the Amazon. Moreover, she awaited at Havre the arrival of the Southhampton boat, the connection of which left Waterloo at 9.30 on the night of the 27th. “To-night!” French thought as he hastily glanced at his watch. It was just 8.42. _What_ a stroke of luck! He would travel by it, and with any reasonable good fortune he would have these Vanes safe in his clutches before another dozen hours had passed. As a man of action French was unsurpassed. Within five minutes he had called an assistant, a keen, efficient young sergeant named Carter, and instructed him to join him that night on the 9.30 Continental train from Waterloo, had sent another keen, efficient helper post-haste to have extradition warrants and other necessaries sent to the same train, and had rung up for a taxi to take him home to tell his wife of his change of plan and to put two or three things together for the journey. In short, thanks to his energy, the hands of the Waterloo station clock had scarcely reached 9.25 when he and Sergeant Carter reached the platform from which the boat train was about to start. Awaiting them was Manning, the other keen and efficient assistant, who handed over warrants for the arrest and extradition of Mr. and Mrs. Vane, passports, English and French money, as well as an introduction to the French police at Havre. “Good, Manning! That’s all right,” French approved as he took over the munitions of war. In another couple of minutes the train drew slowly out of the station, and increasing its speed as it passed the myriad lights of South London, was soon roaring through the darkness of the open country beyond.