A brilliantly lighted
hostelry proved to be their objective, and there, in a quiet corner
of the deserted billiard room, over their glasses, they discussed this
mysterious case, which at first had looked so simple of solution if only
because it offered so many unusual features, but which, the deeper they
probed, merely revealed fresh complications.
"The business of those Fry people, in Scotland, was a rotten
disappointment," said Dunbar, suddenly. "They were merely paid by the
late Mrs. Vernon to re-address letters to a little newspaper shop in
Knightsbridge, where an untraceable boy used to call for them! Martin
has just reported this evening. Perth wires for instructions, but it's a
dead-end, I'm afraid."
"You know," said Sowerby, fishing a piece of cork from the brown froth
of a fine example by Guinness, "to my mind our hope's in Soames; and if
we want to find Soames, to my mind we want to look, not east, but west."
"Hear, hear!" concorded Stringer, gloomily sipping hot rum.
"It seems to me," continued Sowerby, "that Limehouse is about the last
place in the world a man like Soames would think of hiding in."
"It isn't where he'll be THINKING of hiding," snapped Dunbar, turning
his fierce eyes upon the last speaker. "You can't seem to get the idea
out of your head, Sowerby, that Soames is an independent agent.
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