My tea I took in the hotel, and afterwards smoked a cigar, until just before six the waiter handed me a message, a brief reply to mine, which read: "Why are you running risks in Broadstairs, when you should be elsewhere? Be judicious and leave.--Greer." I read the message over a dozen times. What risks could Kirk be running by coming to Broadstairs? Was not that telegram essentially a word of warning given by one accomplice to another? And yet Ethelwynn trusted Kirk just as blindly and foolishly as her father had done. But was not the truth a strange one? She had concealed from me, as she was concealing from the world, that the Professor had died at the hand of an unknown assassin. Or was it that she herself was an accomplice? No, I could never believe that. I refused to give credence to any such suggestion. I ascended the long hill to Broadstairs Station, and half an hour later left for Victoria. My intention was to go direct to Strassburg and there to discover and unmask the impostor. But ere I reached London the night mail for the Continent had already left Charing Cross, so I took a taxicab to my lonely home, where Gwen was awaiting me, still anxious and expectant. I told her of the fruitlessness of my errand, whereupon she sank back into her chair, staring straight into the fire. In brief I explained that I had discovered the existence of a person in Strassburg who could probably give me a clue to the whereabouts of Kirk and Mabel. Hence my intention of departing by the first service next morning. "Cannot you telegraph and ask?" suggested the girl. "We seem, Harry, to be losing so much time," she added frantically. "You haven't been to the police." "I know, Gwen," I said in sorrow, "but I can't do more. To telegraph further might close the channel of our inquiry. No, we must still remain patient." Then, after snatching some food which had been left in the dining-room for me, I swallowed a glass of burgundy and entered the small room which I used as my particular den. From there I rang up Pelham on the telephone, and heard the latest details concerning the business which I was now sadly neglecting. Afterwards I sat down and wrote an advertisement for the _Times_, an appeal addressed to "Silence" for news of my lost wife, an appeal which at the same time contained a veiled threat of exposure of the affair in Sussex Place. This I concluded, and, ringing up an express messenger, dispatched it to the advertisement offices of the paper. Then, with sudden resolve, I went forth to Wimpole Street to call upon Leonard Langton. I found him in his cosy, well-furnished chambers, busy writing letters, while the round-faced man seated in a big arm-chair by the fire smoking a pipe he introduced as his chum with whom he shared chambers, Doctor Hamilton Flynn. "Flynn's a specialist on the nose and throat," he laughed. "He has his consulting rooms along in Harley Street, and we pig it here together."