Then Sime came back and they all went in and shut the door.” Cheyne snorted angrily. “It didn’t occur to you, I suppose, to make any effort to help me or even find out if I was alive or dead? You weren’t going to have any trouble, even if you did become an accessory after the fact?” “I’m coming to that, Mr. Cheyne. All in good time, sir.” Speedwell rubbed his hands unctuously. “You will understand that as long as the garden was occupied I couldn’t come out from behind the bush. But directly the coast was clear I got out of the garden and turned along the lane where they had carried you. I wondered where they could have hidden you, and I started searching. I remembered what Sime had said about the ladder, so I went to the half-built house and had a look around, but I couldn’t find you in it. Then I saw you lying back of the road fence, but just at that minute I heard footsteps, and I stopped behind a pile of bricks till the party would pass. But you called out and the lady stopped, and once again I couldn’t interfere. I heard the arrangements about the taxi, and when the lady went away to get it I slipped out and hid where I could see it. In that way I got its number. Next day I saw the driver and got out of him where he had taken you, and I kept my eye on you and when you got better trailed you to Miss Merrill’s. From other people living in the flats I found out about her.” After a pause he concluded: “And I think, gentlemen, that’s about all I have to tell you.” Inspector French slowly expelled a cloud of gray cigar smoke from his mouth. “Really, Speedwell, you have surpassed yourself,” he murmured. “Your story, as I told you, sounds like a novel. A pity though, that having gone so far you did not go a little farther. You did not find out, for example, what business this mysterious quartet were plotting?” “I did not, Mr. French,” the man returned earnestly. “I gathered that it was connected with ‘the tracing’ that Dangle spoke of, and I imagined the tracing was what they had been wanting from Mr. Cheyne, and evidently had got, but I didn’t get a sight of it, and I have no idea of their game.” “And did you find out nothing that might be a help? Where did those three men spend their time? What did they do in the daytime?” “Just what I told Mr. Cheyne, sir. I gave him perfectly correct information in everything. Dangle is a town sharp and helps run a gambling room in Knightsbridge. Sime is another of the same—collects pigeons in the night clubs for the others to pluck. Blessington, I got the hint, lived by blackmail, but I’ve no proof of this.” “Anything else?”