Staff nodded to each man in turn, and reviewed their faces, finding them one and all more or less commonplace and uninteresting. "How-d'-you-do?" he said civilly; and to Manvers: "Well ...?" "We were wondering if you'd seen anything of Mr. Iff this morning?" "No--nothing. He came to bed after I'd gone to sleep last night, and was up and out before I woke. Why?" "He--" the purser began; but the man he had called Mr. Arnold interrupted. "He claimed to be a Secret Service man, didn't he?" "He did," returned Staff. "Captain Cobb saw his credentials, I believe." "But that didn't satisfy him," Manvers put in eagerly. "I managed to make him understand that credentials could be forged, so he wirelessed for information. And," the purser added triumphantly after a distinct dramatic pause, "he got it." "You mean Iff isn't what he claimed--?" exclaimed Staff. Arnold nodded brusquely. "There's no such person in the service," he affirmed. "Then he _is_ Ismay!" The Pinkerton man answered him: "If he is and I lay eyes on him, I can tell in two shakes." "By George!" cried Staff in admiration--"the clever little scamp!" "You may well say so," said Manvers bitterly. "If you'd listened to me--if the captain had--this wouldn't have happened." "What--the theft?" "Yes, that primarily; but now, you know--because he was given so much rope--he's vanished." "What!" "Vanished--disappeared--gone!" said the purser, waving his hands graphically. "But he can't have left the ship!" "Doesn't seem so, does it?" said the Pinkerton man morosely. "All the same, we've made a pretty thorough search, and he can't be found." "You see," resumed Manvers, "when the captain got word yesterday afternoon that Iff or Ismay wasn't what he pretended to be, he simply wirelessed back for a detective, and didn't arrest Iff, because--he said--he couldn't get away. I told him he was wrong--and he was!" VIII THE WRONG BOX When the janitor and the taxicab operator between them had worried all his luggage upstairs, Staff paid and tipped them and thankfully saw the hall-door close on their backs. He was tired, over-heated and glad to be alone. Shaking off his coat, he made a round of his rooms, opening windows. Those in the front of the apartment looked out from the second-story elevation upon East Thirtieth Street, between Fourth and Lexington Avenues. Those in the rear (he discovered to his consummate disgust) commanded an excellent view of a very deep hole in the ground swarming with Italian labourers and dotted with steam drills, mounds of broken rock and carters with their teams; also a section of East Twenty-ninth Street was visible through the space that had been occupied no longer ago than last spring by a dignified row of brownstone houses with well-tended backyards.