It was eleven o'clock that night when Storri returned to the mouth of the drain; he was wrapped in a greatcoat and wore high boots. There were no houses about; as for loiterers, the region was deserted after dark. Storri looked out on the broad bosom of the river; he noticed that even at low tide a boat drawing no more than eighteen inches might push within a dozen feet of the drain. Satisfied that no one observed him, Storri stepped to the mouth of the drain and disappeared. He splashed along in the running water with his heavy boots for something like a rod; then he stopped and lighted a bicycle lantern which he took from his greatcoat pocket. The lantern threw a bright flare after the manner of the headlight of a locomotive, and Storri could hear the scurrying splash of the rats as it sent an alarming ray ahead like a little searchlight. Being lighted on his way, Storri kept steadily forward until, turning the corner where the drain broke to the right across the White Lot, he was lost to sight. As Storri disappeared, two men far behind him at the mouth of the drain stood watching. They had thus far followed Storri dimly with their eyes by the light he carried. "What's become of him, Inspector?" whispered Mr. Duff, the shorter of the men. "He hasn't doused his glim, has he?" "No," replied Inspector Val, "there's a bend at that point." "What's next?" asked Mr. Duff; "do we follow him in and collar him? or do we just wait here?" "Collar him!" repeated Inspector Val disgustedly. "I'd like to catch you collaring him! Is this a time to talk of collaring, and we no further than the threshold of the job? Let him alone; he's only laying out the work to-night." CHAPTER XIX HOW LONDON BILL TOOK A PAL Perhaps the golden rule of all detective work is, Never let the detected one detect. Inspector Val was alive to this ordinance of his craft, and an hour later, when Storri cautiously emerged from the drain, he met neither sign nor sound of Inspector Val and Mr. Duff. Feeling sure that his exploration had not been observed, Storri wended homeward to his rooms, his chin sunk in meditation. Storri the next day went to New York, and immediately on arrival at that hotel which he designed to honor with his custom he sprang into a hansom, and within ten minutes was at a private-detective agency, being the one whereat he aforetime procured those spies to set about the Harley house--spies long since withdrawn. The head of this detective bureau was a coarse-visaged, brandy-blotched man named Slater. "And so," observed Mr. Slater, following a statement of Storri's errand, "you want to be put next to a 'peter-man, what we call a box-worker?" "I would like to meet the best in the business," said Storri; "one also who is acquainted with others in his line, and who can be relied upon to the death."