Later, the press circulated a description of Eva Wilkinson, with the result that scores of letters were received, most of them obviously written by amateur detectives, or by those peculiar kind of imbeciles whose imagination is so vivid that any person seems to fit the description of the person missing. The information in a few of these letters seemed definite enough to follow up, but in every case I drew blank. I gave my chief attention to learning the recent movements of known gangs who might be concerned in an enterprise of this sort, and at the end of two days this persistency brought a result. I received a letter posted in the West-central district, written, or rather scrawled, in printed letters. It was as follows: "You may be on the right scent or you may not, but take warning. If you got to know anything, it would be the worse for E.W. We are in earnest, and our advice is, leave the job alone. No harm will come to the old devil's daughter, if you mind your own business. She'll turn up again all right. If you don't mind your own business you'll probably find her presently, and can bury her. You'll find her dead,--THE LEAGUE." With this letter I went to Chelsea, and the professor met me with a letter in his hand. He had received a like communication--word for word the same. "An exact copy shows a barrenness of ideas," said I. "But they have begun to move, Wigan. That is a great thing, and what I have been waiting for. Come and talk it over. For once Zena is no help. All she says is that this is not an ordinary case of kidnaping. Well, it certainly is a little out of the ordinary. That car, Wigan, the tramp who saw it, the stoppages it made, the handkerchief in it--does anything strike you?" "Since we picked up the trail so easily to begin with, I do not quite understand the subsequent difficulty," I said. "From Hounslow a much more astute person must have taken charge of the enterprise." "A booby trap, Wigan. It was prepared for us, and we walked into it, I am a trifle sick at having done so, but perhaps it will serve us a good turn in the end. The tramp no doubt was in the business. His definite information to the police started us. If that car had wanted to escape notice, do you suppose it would have pulled up outside Reading, or at a cottage, where it obligingly left its imprint on the roadside? Why should the man explain the filling of a flask at a public house? Why should he talk of a runaway match to the woman at that cottage? He was laying a trail. Miss Wilkinson's handkerchief was found in that car, but I wager she was never in the car herself." "I think you are right, but it doesn't help us to the truth, does it?" "Every possibility proved impossible helps us," Quarles answered. "This is a case for negative argument, so we next ask whether Eva Wilkinson left the terrace willingly. I think we must say 'no.'" "Do not forget the missing coat and skirt," I said.