This letter afforded the Ex-Inspector both consolation and satisfaction. At any rate, he would share in the triumph when the hands of Justice closed upon the criminal. He decided therefore to postpone his departure to the selected spot for his retirement at any rate, for a month or two—say till after Christmas. But Fate decreed that he was in action again before then. Anthony Bathurst’s expectations were realised. On a misty morning in mid-November that promised a better day the _S.S. Nicholas Maes_ steamed out of Hull and began to plough her way through icy-cold green waves towards the rising morning sun and the City of Amsterdam. She was an undistinguished unit of the Holland S.S. Company but on this particular occasion perhaps, stood nearer to a place in the maritime sun than ever before. For “amongst those sailing” were two plain-clothes men from New Scotland Yard—ostensibly ordinary tourists—and a handsome, stalwart and venerable Indian. The passenger-list recorded the Indian as “Ram Das” and the two plain-clothes men as “Hobbs” and “Sutcliffe.” All these names, it is needless to say, had been assumed for the occasion. Similarly also Ex-Chief-Inspector Bannister, in at the death, true to Mr. Bathurst’s written promise, had thought it safer and better to register in a name other than his own. You never know how the sight of a name, observed quite by accident, will strike a person’s remoter memory and awaken an undesired interest. The two plain-clothes men were under explicit instructions to hold no communication whatever with anybody. Ram Das, or Lal Singh as we will call him from now henceforward was to be shadowed to every step and watched to every action without his suspicions being in any way aroused and New Scotland Yard is not in the habit of sending one man—eminent though he might be—to do two men’s work. Five hours’ voyage out of the port of Hull the passengers of the _Nicholas Maes_ who had summoned sufficient courage and hardihood to brave the wind and weather on the top deck had their attention diverted for a few moments by an aeroplane that flew joyously over them and rapidly left them far behind. It was apparently making for the coast of Holland. Lal Singh, keeping as much in the background as possible, regarded it with the stoical calm of his race and the pseudo-tourists (never very far away from him) were quick to detect this. It may be observed that the aeroplane in question carried a trio of eminent passengers—Sir Austin Kemble, the Chief Commissioner, the Crown Prince Alexis of Clorania—whom Mr. Bathurst had insisted upon being present, and no less a person than Mr. Bathurst himself. They made Amsterdam—the spider-web city of the “Land of Water”—in excellent time and made their way, piloted by the Chief Commissioner, to the Kalverstraat.