The only ray of hope that he could glimpse was the fact that, since he had been assigned to the case, four more stones had been reported--again in pairs. This proved that his former reasoning had been correct and also that the smugglers evidently intended to bring in all of the twenty-one stones, two at a time. But when he came to catalog the hiding places which might be used to conceal two articles of the size of the stones already spotted, he was stumped. The list included a walking stick, the heels of a pair of women's shoes, two dummy pieces of candy concealed in a box of real confections, a box of talcum, a bag of marbles, the handle of an umbrella, or any one of a number of other trinkets which travelers carry as a matter of course or bring home as curios or gifts. Finally, after two solid months of unproductive work, he boarded the midnight train for Washington and strolled into the chief's office the following morning, to lay his cards on the table. "Frankly," he admitted, "I haven't accomplished a thing. I'm as far from breaking into the circle as I was at the beginning, and, so far as I can see, there isn't any hope of doing it for some time to come." "Well," inquired the chief, "do you want to be relieved of the case or do you want me to drop the matter entirely--to confess that the Customs Service has been licked by a single clever smuggler?" "Not at all!" and Marks's tone indicated that such a thought had never entered his head. "I want the Service to stick with the case and I want to continue to handle it. But I do want a definite assurance of time." "How much time?" "That I can't say. The only lead I've located--and that isn't sufficient to be dignified by the term 'clue'--will take weeks and probably months to run to earth. I don't see another earthly trail to follow, but I would like to have time to see whether this one leads anywhere." "All right," agreed the chief, fully realizing what "E. Z." was up against and not being hurried by any pressure from the outside--for the case had been carefully kept out of the newspapers--"this is September. Suppose we say the first of the year? How does that suit you?" "Fair enough, if that's the best you can do." "I'm afraid it is," was the comment from across the desk, "because that's all the case is worth to us. Your time is valuable and we can't afford to spend a year on any case--unless it's something as big as the sugar frauds. Stick with it until New Year's, and if nothing new develops before then we'll have to admit we're licked and turn you loose on something else." "Thanks, Chief," said Marks, getting up from his chair. "You can depend upon my doing everything possible in the next three months to locate the leak and I surely appreciate your kindness in not delivering an ultimatum that you want the smuggler or my job. But then I guess you know that I couldn't work any harder than I'm going to, anyhow."