“No, he didn’t come to dinner last night either; as a matter of fact, I particularly wanted to see him. But he doesn’t live with me, you know; he’s got lodgings in Abingdon Street.” “He’s done a bolt, Miss Fratten; you’re not asking me to believe that you don’t know about it.” “A bolt! I’m quite certain he hasn’t! What makes you say he has?” Barrod explained. “Pooh!” said Inez; “that doesn’t mean he’s bolted, that simply means he’s fed up with being watched—so would anyone be. He’ll be at his lodgings tonight—probably at our house before then. D’you want to see him?” “I want to know where he is. You’d better tell him not to play that game again, Miss Fratten—if it is a game; it’ll be landing him in trouble.” “It won’t,” said Inez defiantly. “It won’t, for the simple reason that I’ve found the girl he was with that evening!” “What’s that?” exclaimed both men simultaneously. “Well, I’m pretty sure I have; that’s why I wanted Ryland—so that he could identify her. But it’s more than a coincidence that the one clue we’d got has led straight to the very place I’ve been suspecting.” She turned to Poole. “Who do you think ‘Daphne’ is, Mr. Poole?—the girl who threw herself at Ryland’s head and then left him kicking his heels at the very time and place that would make things look bad for him—she’s Miss Saverel, secretary of the Victory Finance Company!” CHAPTER XVII This Way and That Inez explained to the two detectives how she had obtained from Ryland the handkerchief with an unusual scent which had belonged to Daphne, the mysterious girl who alone could have confirmed, or at any rate supported, his alibi. She told of her tracing it to “Mignon’s” and of how the assistant there had fined down the likely owners to a single one whom she herself knew by sight. She told of how she had gone down the following morning to the girl’s room in the Fulham Road and how the girl had presently pointed out to her a young woman, simply but well dressed, who was walking along the other side of the road. Inez had followed her to South Kensington Station, and thence in the Underground to the Monument, from where the girl had walked to an office in Fenchurch Street. Inez had not dared to follow her into the building but, after a discreet interval, had scrutinized the names on the board and among them found, to her intense excitement, that of the Victory Finance Company. After a few minutes’ thought, she had applied to the hall porter as to whether he knew if a friend of hers, Miss Tatham (a creature of her imagination) was still employed with the Victory Finance Company, to which the porter had replied that so far as he knew the only young woman employed by the Company was Miss Saverel, who had only that minute arrived—but she could obtain further information from the Company itself—on the fourth floor—he offered her the lift. Inez had declined his offer, given him a shilling and departed. She had herself tried to find Ryland but, failing to do so,