“There will be a departmental inquiry, of course. We can’t help that,” he said. “The only thing that worries me is that I’ve got poor old Balder into bad odour, and I was trying to put him right. I don’t know what the experience of the Boy Scouts is,” he went off at a tangent, “but my own is that the worst service you can render to any man is to try to do him a good turn.” It was now nearly ten o’clock, and Dick was feeling faint with hunger and lack of sleep, for he had eaten nothing at Horsham. Once or twice, as they walked toward Harley Terrace, Elk looked back over his shoulder. “Expecting anybody?” asked Dick, suddenly alive to the possibility of danger. “No-o, not exactly,” said Elk. “But I’ve got a hunch that we’re being followed.” “I saw a man just now who I thought was following us,” said Dick, “a man in a fawn raincoat.” “Oh, him?” said Elk, indifferent alike to the rules of grammar and the presence of his shadow. “That is one of my men. There’s another on the other side of the road. I’m not thinking of them, my mind for the moment being fixed on Frogs. Do you mind if we cross the road?” he asked hurriedly, and, without waiting for a reply, caught Gordon’s arm and led him across the broad thoroughfare. “I always object to walking on the same side of a street as the traffic runs. I like to meet traffic; it’s not good to be overtaken. I thought so!” A small Ford van, painted with the name of a laundry, which had been crawling along behind them, suddenly spurted and went ahead at top speed. Elk followed the car with his eyes until it reached the Trafalgar Square end of Whitehall. Instead of branching left toward Pall Mall or right to the Strand, the van swung round in a half-circle and came back to meet them. Elk half turned and made a signal. “This is where we follow the example of the chicken,” said Elk, and made another hurried crossing. When they reached the pavement he looked round. The detectives who were following him had understood his signal, and one had leaped on the running-board of the van, which was pulled up to the pavement. There was a few minutes’ talk between the driver and the officer, and then they all drove off together. “Pinched,” said Elk laconically. “He’ll take him to the station on some charge or other and hold him. I guessed he’d see what I was after—my man, I mean. The easiest way to shadow is to shadow in a trade truck,” said Elk. “A trade van can do anything it likes; it can loiter by the pavement, it can turn round and go back, it can go fast or slow, and nobody takes the slightest notice. If that had been a limousine, it would have attracted the attention of every policeman by drawling along by the pavement, so as to overtake us just at the right minute. Probably it wasn’t any more than a shadow, but to me,” he said with a quiver of his shoulder, “it felt rather like sudden death!” Whether Elk’s cheerfulness was assumed or natural, he succeeded in impressing his companion.