“If you can suggest any method by which I could have prevented her from recognizing me and recognizing the fact that I recognized her I will admit that I was wrong,” and T.B. Smith agreed. “You may be right,” he said; “anyway, look after yourself.” Michael promptly forgot his chief’s advice and spent his evening making a solitary reconnaissance of Crime Street. Crime Street does not appear upon any plan of London, but if you will look at any large survey of the Hampstead district, you will find in a somewhat irregular tangle of buildings within a stone’s throw of the Heath, a curious oval which is conspicuous on the plan, not only by its own symmetry but by the graceful lines of the thoroughfares which radiate therefrom. This is Amberscombe Gardens. The centre of the oval is occupied by four houses, Numbers Two, Four, Six and Eight; the northern side of the gardens by five houses, Numbers One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine. Into Amberscombe Gardens from the north run three roads, the first of which (opening into the oval between Numbers One and Three) being called The Approach; the second, dividing Numbers Five and Seven, called Bethburn Avenue; the third between Numbers Seven and Nine, Coleburn Avenue. On the south side of the oval the arrangement of the streets is very similar. Originally, the central space had been occupied by nine houses but these had been pulled down by the proprietors of the remaining four and a private garden, common to all four houses, had been laid out by the owners of these properties. So that on the southern side of the central oval, there were no buildings, but a wall bisected at regular intervals by plain garden doors which form such a common feature of London suburban residences. In reality, the roadway to the north and south of the plot is all Amberscombe Gardens, but the oval which curves round to the north was, at the period this story covers, known to the police as “Crime Street,” and in this description the nine houses on both sides of the northern curve were involved. Number One, the most modest of all the buildings, was in the occupation of Dr. Philip Garon, an American practitioner who made frequent visits across the Atlantic and invariably returned to deposit a very handsome surplus in the local branch of the London and Western Counties Bank. Dr. Garon was successful as a result of the sublime assurance of all ocean-going passengers, that the notice, conspicuously displayed in the smoking-room warning passengers not to play cards with strangers, did not apply to them.