"It is, sir," replied the astonished Mostyn. "You had no suspicion of the true sex of Mrs. Shallop?" "None whatever." "Had he any money when he came ashore?" "Not to my knowledge, sir." "Well, the fact remains," rejoined the Head Commissioner drily, "that Mr. Benjamin Skeets has given us the slip; although, we hope, we may possibly lay hands on him before long. He can't get very far away. All right, Williams, carry on. Keep me informed directly you hear anything of a definite nature. Come along, Mostyn; we'll rejoin the others. Not a word about this till after dinner." CHAPTER XXXVII How the Steelwork Arrived There was no doubt about it: Mr. Benjamin Skeets was a very crafty fellow. By adopting the disguise of a woman, and acting up to the part of a vulgar parvenue, he had completely covered his tracks, and had thrown dust into the eyes of everyone with whom he had come in contact--up to a certain point and then only with one exception. Messrs. Skeets and Shale were no mere novices in crime, and their daring _coup_ of defrauding the United Trusts Banking Company of the round sum of L30,000, and their subsequent disappearance, had both mystified and astonished the British public by its audacity, and had completely baffled the greatest detective experts of Scotland Yard. Skeets had lived up to his disguise very thoroughly. Even the subsequent engagement of Miss Olive Baird had been undertaken solely with the idea of elaborating the smaller but by no means unnecessary details of his disguise. Since there was no reliable description of Mr. Joseph Shales, who was the unseen partner in the deal with the banking firm, it was a fairly simple matter for him to get out of the country under the guise of the husband of "Mrs. Shallop". It had been the intention of the precious pair to leave the _West Barbican_ at Cape Town; hence Mrs. Shallop's anxiety to get a wireless message through as soon as the ship came within radio range of Table Bay. But the absence of a reply from Skeets's confederate at Cape Town had so startled the fugitives that they decided to go on until they found a convenient port, preferably in India, where they could lie low and live on their ill-gotten plunder. The foundering of the _West Barbican_ had upset their calculations. Practically the whole of the pair's booty went down with the ship. Mr. Shallop, otherwise Shales, having no further use for his destitute partner, went off in one of the ship's boats which was eventually picked up. Arriving at Cape Town he took the ill-advised step of looking-up a pal. The latter was already languishing in a South African penal establishment, and Mr. Shales, upon making inquiries, was enlightened by an acquaintance of the convict, who chanced to be an astute detective.