During his meal, the detective studiously switched his mind off his problem—thought was bad for digestion—and read the evening paper, but over a cup of coffee and a pipe he allowed it to return to the absorbing subject. One point in particular worried him—the identity of the girl in the waiting car. The obvious inference was that she was the “Daphne” who had lured Ryland Fratten into a compromising situation and left him there to incur inevitable suspicion—the “Daphne” who, according to Inez Fratten, was Miss Saverel, secretary of the Victory Finance Company. It was a tempting theory—so tempting and so obvious as to make him mistrust it. The thought that worried him was that the whole theory of this girl—her incarnation as Daphne and her identity as Miss Saverel—depended so far upon the evidence of the two Frattens—the two people (Poole hated himself for the thought) who really benefited by the death of Sir Garth. It was true that he had himself seen a reputed Miss Saverel this evening and that she and her companion had behaved in a highly suspicious manner by giving him the slip at Charing Cross. But, now that he came to analyse it, their conduct was not necessarily suspicious—it was only so if she were the girl the Frattens said she was; there might be a perfectly natural and simple explanation of their action—a forgotten appointment—a sudden change of mind. The girl in the waiting car: was it conceivable—a horrible thought—that she was Inez Fratten herself? Poole realized that he had no knowledge of her whereabouts that evening; he only knew that when her father’s dead body was brought back to the house she was “out.” He made a note to look into the matter—an odious duty but a duty that must be done—and then, shaking the matter from his mind, walked back to Scotland Yard. He found that the Charing Cross taxi-driver had already been traced. The man could give no clear information about his fare; he only knew that a lady and gentleman had engaged him at Charing Cross and paid him off at Piccadilly Circus—a dead end. Soon after half-past nine the police car pulled up close to the Marines South African Memorial, a hundred yards or so west of the Admiralty Arch, and the experimental party emerged. Poole had brought Sergeant Gower with him to act as a witness and he now directed Detective-Constables Kelly and Rawton to walk slowly arm-in-arm from the Duke’s Steps across the Mall, passing over the “island” on their way. Sergeant Gower was to follow them at about twenty paces distance, representing Mr. Coningsby Smythe, and Poole himself, armed with a walking stick with a rubber ferrule, took up his post in the car.