"In fact it's check," commented Sir Hilary, who was something of a chess-player. "Now you're manœuvring for checkmate." "Precisely," said Foyle. "I've been trying, too, to get hold of something about Goldenburg. Neither we nor the American police have yet been able to connect him up with Grell. We're still trying, though. Sooner or later we shall get hold of something. And there's Lola. If we could have got Wills to identify her as the veiled woman, we should have had a very good excuse for arresting her in spite of her alibi. She's the sort of woman who would prepare an alibi. We've not got any proof that she knew Goldenburg. That's our great difficulty now--to link up the various persons and find how they've been associated with each other before. There's one thing, sir. I've managed to get the inquest adjourned for a month, so we shan't have to make any premature disclosures in evidence. The newspapers are still hanging about. They got wind that something was happening at Malchester Row, and there were a dozen or more men waiting for me when I came out, I told 'em that we'd been trying to identify a woman and had failed. They'd have known that anyway. They promised to be discreet. They're good chaps. It isn't like the old days. There was one man--Winters his name was--who came up to the Yard to see me once. He was told I was at Vine Street. He went down there and was told I hadn't been there. "'Here's a piece of luck,' he says to himself, and went back to his office. There he wrote up a couple of columns telling how the whole of the C.I.D. had lost trace of me. I came out of Bow Street, where I'd been giving evidence in a case, to see a big contents-bill staring me in the face-- FAMOUS DETECTIVE VANISHES "Before I could buy a paper, another newspaper chap comes along. He stared at me as if I was a ghost. "'Hello!' he says. 'Don't you know you're lost? Every pressman in London is looking for you.' "'Am I?' says I. 'How?' "Then it all came out. Since then I have been very careful in dealing with newspaper men." Sir Hilary laughed and nodded. "Is there anything more?" he asked. "Yes." Foyle had grown grave once more. "I handed over the cipher that we found at Grave Street to Jones, to see if he could make anything out of it. He's an expert at these kind of puzzles. Well, he's just reported that the thing is simple as it stands though in other circumstances it might be difficult. The translation runs-- "This will be the best method of communicating with E. M. if L. supplies her with key. Her 'phone number 12845 Gerrard." CHAPTER XXIII