Poole’s brain raced as he searched aspect after aspect of this theory. Another thought struck him: Miss Peake had said that she had seen Sir Garth’s assailant on the Steps “leap into a waiting vehicle and drive away.” Poole remembered the words clearly, though he had not taken them down; the old-fashioned “vehicle” had caught his memory. Miss Peake, of course, was mad—quite useless as a witness—but, if he remembered rightly, that sentence had not been spoken in the hysterical outburst, that had shown him how hopeless she was, but in one of her more lucid moments. He had thought nothing of it at the time; her hysteria had discounted everything she had said—and, of course, she was clearly wrong in saying that the man had struck Fratten on the Steps—the evidence of Hessel, Lossett, and Wagglebow, all independent of one another, was too strong to allow of any doubt on that head. Poole decided to take the first opportunity of testing the car theory; the test might even be made at the very spot if it were done late enough at night; in the meantime he would go back and question both P. C. Lolling and the Park-keeper, Blossom—if Miss Peake’s story were true and there had been a waiting “vehicle” somewhere near the Admiralty Arch, one of them might have seen it. There was no difficulty in finding Lolling; he had not, apparently, moved twenty yards from where Poole had first found him, and was talking to a mounted constable; the detective wondered whether conversation might not be rather a weakness of P. C. Lolling’s. Lolling himself appeared to be aware that appearances did not favour him, for he hastened to explain to the Inspector that he had just been questioning the mounted constable about the events of 24th October—apparently the latter’s beat took him occasionally down the Mall. It had not done so, however, on the evening in question; he knew nothing of the circumstances of Sir Garth’s death, nor, in reply to Poole’s enquiry had he seen anything of a suspicious-looking car “loitering” in the neighbourhood of the Admiralty Arch. Lolling, to his infinite regret, was equally unable to help Poole in his new quest, though he thought it more than likely that his friend the Park-keeper could. The united efforts of Poole, Lolling and the mounted constable, however, failed to reveal the present whereabouts of Mr. Blossom; after wasting half an hour in fruitless search, Poole gave it up, directing Lolling to send the Park-keeper to Scotland Yard as soon as he came off duty. It was now too late to go in search of Mr. Tapping if he was to keep his rendezvous with Miss Fratten, so Poole decided to look in at Scotland Yard and refer his new theory to Chief Inspector Barrod, prior to taking the Underground from Westminster to the Monument. Barrod, however, had just gone across to the Home Office with Sir Leward Marradine, on some diplomatic case that was worrying the government, so Poole had to cool his heels for half an hour before starting for the City.