"But I say!" exclaimed Gilling. "You don't mean to tell me that three people--one a woman--could get away through these courts and alleys, packed as they are, without being seen? Come now!" The detectives smiled indulgently. "You don't know these folks," said one of them, inclining his head towards a squalid street at the end of which they had all gathered. "But they know _us_. It's a point of honour with them never to tell the truth to a policeman or a detective. If they saw those three, they'd never admit it to us--until it's made worth their while." "Get it made worth their while, then!" exclaimed Gilling, impatiently. "All in due course, sir," said the official voice. "Leave it to us." The amateur searchers after the iniquitous recognized the futility of their own endeavours in that moment, and went away to discuss matters amongst themselves, while the detectives proceeded leisurely, after their fashion, into the Warren as if they were out for a quiet constitutional in its salubrious byways. And Sir Cresswell Oliver remarked on the difficulty of knowing exactly what to do once you had red-tape on one side and unusual craftiness on the other. "You think there's no doubt that gold was removed this morning by Chatfield's daughter?" he said to Copplestone as they went back to the centre of the town together, Gilling and Vickers having turned aside elsewhere and Spurge gone to the hospital to ask for news of his cousin. "You think she was the woman whose footprints you saw up there at the Beaver's Glen?" "Seeing that she's here in Norcaster and in touch with those two, what else can I think?" replied Copplestone. "It seems to me that they got in touch with her by wireless and that she removed the gold in readiness for her father and Andrius coming in here by that North Sea tug. If we could only find out where she's put those boxes, or where she got the car from in which she brought it down from the tower--" "Vickers has already started some inquiries about cars," said Sir Cresswell. "She must have hired a car somewhere in the town. Certainly, if we could hear of that gold we should be in the way of getting on their track." But they heard nothing of gold or of fugitives or of what the police and detectives were doing until the middle of the afternoon. And then Mr. Elkin, the manager of the bank from which Chatfield had withdrawn the estate and the private balance, came hurrying to the "Angel" and to Mrs. Greyle, his usually rubicund face pale with emotion, his hand waving a scrap of crumpled paper. Mrs. Greyle and Audrey were at that moment in consultation with Sir Cresswell Oliver and Copplestone--the bank manager burst in on them without ceremony. "I say, I say!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Will you believe it!--the gold's come back! It's all safe--every penny. Bless me!--I scarcely know whether I'm dreaming or not. But--we've got it!" "What's all this?" demanded Sir Cresswell. "You've got--that gold?"