Ellery promised to devote the day to an attempt to trace his missing acquaintance, and the inspector departed, with a last word of advice given as by one man of the world to another. But Ellery had an unpleasant feeling that until that fellow—what the devil was his name?—was run to earth, his movements would be carefully watched by the police. Which was not at all the development he had been expecting. The Chelsea Arts Club, where he had certainly sometimes met the fellow, seemed the best place to begin the search, and Ellery accordingly went round there to make his inquiries. But he drew blank. No one could place a fellow who lived in Chelsea—probably an actor—whose name was neither Foster nor Forrest nor Forrester, but something more or less like that. Every one he asked said it was too vague a description, or offered him suggestions which he at once rejected. Ellery began to feel that his job was not going to be easy. As he left the Club he was more than a little depressed, especially as he felt sure that a heavy-footed individual, who kept some distance behind, was under instructions to follow him. The police boots were unmistakable; he noticed them across the road as he came down the Club steps, and turning round a moment later, he saw their wearer following none too discreetly in his wake. “If that is the police idea of shadowing a man,” he said to himself, “I don’t think much of it. But perhaps they don’t mind my knowing.” Then he considered whether it was worth while to try giving his watcher the slip. But that, he reflected, would only make things worse, and get him suspected all the more. He must let himself be followed, and he might as well take it cheerfully. “With cat-like tread, upon the foe we steal,” he whistled, and laughed as he heard the feet of the law clumping along behind him. Chapter XIII An Arrest Inspector Blaikie had made arrangements to see Superintendent Wilson after lunch; and at half-past two they were closeted together in the superintendent’s office. The decision about the inquest could be no longer delayed: it was imperative that the police should make up their minds how far they would place the facts which they had discovered before the coroner’s jury. The police nearly always hate a coroner’s jury—at least in cases in which murder is suspected or known. They dislike the premature disclosure of their hardly gathered clues before their case is complete: they dread the misdirected inquisitiveness of some juryman who may unknowingly give the criminal just the hint he wants. Above all, they object to looking like fools; and whether they present an incomplete case, or withhold the information they possess, that is very likely to be their fate in the presence of the good men and true and in the columns of the newspapers the next morning.