patronne's, and jewellery. I'll undertake to have the search made by to-morrow morning."

"Well-no," said the inspector-"the case is ripe enough now, I think. We can go straight to the point now, I think. Come round with me to the Rue de Compiègne, Hôtel des Nations. That's where he has been staying, this Monsieur - otherwise Brother Neel."

CHAPTER XVI.

"THE Mysterious Affair of the Gare du Nord-Important Arrest! Demandez le Journal du Soir'!" "Demandez 'L'Echotier'!-The Crime on the Northern Railway Curious Indications- A Strange Story! L'Echotier'! Vient de paraître !!"

These were the cries which Inspector Byde and Detective Toppin encountered as they crossed the Rue Lafayette on their way to the Rue de Compiègne. The rival hawkers thrust their evening papers before the faces of the two colleagues, but Toppin flourished in return the journal from which he had translated the article printed in the Latest News. It was the Echotier, containing the "indices curieux" that we have just seen.

"That important arrest-what is it?" asked his superior officer-"the French guard?”

"Yes," said Toppin, "and they'll let him out tomorrow. There's nothing in it. Before coming on to you, I looked in again on Monsieur Hy, and—oh, he's too clever, he's much too clever for a world like this!he wants to make out that they are letting the guard go in order to pick him up again next week, with an accomplice and the stolen property, all complete. These papers don't know that yet. The Journal du Soir has

only got as far as the arrest, which I heard all about at the Prefecture this morning."

He then repeated for the inspector's information certain passages in the earlier interview with Monsieur Hy, of which an account has been placed before the reader. With regard to the second interview, during the afternoon, it was all very well for Monsieur Hy to play the excessively malin, but the fact must be, added Mr. Toppin, that the case against the French guard had completely broken down. It seemed that when he had brought the night-mail into Paris, and cleared the train, this man was entitled to a day off duty. On the present occasion he had obtained leave of absence for a couple of days by arrangement with a fellow-employé, who was to replace him. Well, he had celebrated his holiday by a heavy drinking bout, as appeared to be his custom. The police had found him helplessly intoxicated in a cabaret near his lodging. He had been home to take off his uniform, and the police had discovered a revolver hidden amongst his clothes.

""Hidden!" commented the inspector. "The worst species of impressionism!"

"I beg pardon?" queried Mr. Toppin, gaping at his superior officer.

"Why can't they say they 'discovered a revolver amongst his clothes?' That's all they're entitled to say— and see how it tones it down!"

"Then the bullet fitted into the chambers of the revolver."

"Ah, they're not rare, friend Toppin-coincidences like that. And who has decided that the bullet fits into the chambers of the revolver? Because I remember a case once-it was all circumstantial-when a bullet was

reported to us as fitting into a particular fire-arm, and it was nobody's business for a few days to make the test. The bullet certainly would go into the barrel and come out again-oh, there was no mistake about that!-only the bullet was more than a shade too small to have been used with any weapon of that calibre. I remember another circumstantial case in which the ball had been flattened by the obstacle it had encountered, and the fact had not been properly allowed for. Has this prisoner offered any statement?"

"They told me this afternoon that he professes to be able to account for the whole of his time-rather difficult, I should fancy, for the guard of a train. They have lighted upon nothing which points to any theft in the search they have carried out on this fellow's premises, etc.; but of course he would have had time to get compromising objects out of the way. What sort of an explanation he can furnish I must say I don't understand: unless he means to prove that from Creil to Paris he was in the company of the other guard, or something of that kind."

"Instead of letting this man out to-morrow," observed the inspector jocularly, "they ought to put the other guard in with him. Why, they'll be apprehending us next, Toppin-they'll be laying their hands on you and me!"

"Quite capable of it," answered Toppin, with a queer glance at his chief.

The tall, angular dame presiding at the bureau of the Hôtel des Nations, Rue de Compiègne, replied to their inquiry for Mr. Neel that he had not yet come in. This was nevertheless his usual hour-in fact, a little past his usual hour.

"Does he not dine here, at the table d'hôte, every evening?" asked the inspector, looking at his watch.

"Oh, yes," responded the angular dame, who, like all her compatriots in the hotel bureaus near the great termini, spoke English perfectly, and another language or two, perhaps, quite as well-"he dine all evenings."

"Half-past five," murmured the inspector, mechanically consulting his watch once more-"and your table d'hôte-at what time do you hold it?"

"There is two: the fierced at six-dirty, and the others at sayven."

The speaker pointed to a framed announcement of these facts, and, behind the inspector's shoulder, threw killing regards at Toppin, who was really a fine figure of a young man, though inaccessible, it seemed, to the blandishments of maturity.

"Half-past five," muttered Mr. Byde, again-“if he comes in after six, I can hardly manage it."

"Excuse me, inspector," said his colleague in an undertone, as they stood on one side-"but I suppose that when you travel you are always armed?”

"What should you think?" answered Mr. Byde, staring at the young man.

"The usual, I suppose?"

"And so they'd be capable of putting their hands on me, friend Toppin?"

"Well, the police here are no respecters of persons, you know when they're dealing with foreigners. I thought I'd just mention it."

The inspector was about to respond, but checked himself. Brother Neel entered from the street. Had nothing arrived for him, inquired the new-comer, addressing the lady president of the bureau-no telegram?

"No, sair, if you please, not! mais

"Mais?"

"There is come those gentlymen-there."

Brother Neel turned in the direction indicated, and for the moment did not recognise the burly middle-aged man who, stationed with a companion in the obscure recess of the dining-room side-door, appeared to be scrutinising him very narrowly indeed. After a slight hesitation, however, he recollected Mr. Smithson, and advanced, repeating:

course.

"Oh, my dear friend, pardon me!-Mr. Smithson, of A thousand pardons-a thousand, thousand pardons. Pre-occupied, dear friend. An inconceivable affair! So kind of you to call, so very kind of you to call!"

"A minute-can you spare me a minute?" asked the inspector.

"Certainly, my dear friend, Mr. Smithson, certainly. Come upstairs, my dear friend. Have you seen this abominable attack upon the 'Iota'? Have you read that unscrupulous evening newspaper? Can you imagine that such reckless firebrands, or such foolish, credulous alarmists could be so," etc., etc.

Inspector Byde and Mr. Toppin both evinced as keen an interest in the structural surroundings through which they followed Brother Neel, as in the temperance lecturer's cumulative denunciations of the odium wrongfully cast upon the I.O.T.A. Mr. Toppin's mental notes might have been open to the objection of being too obviously, too manifestly, taken down. Not a single means of egress could have escaped that searching eye. He glared at a bricked-up doorway; tapped at a worm-eaten wainscoting; peeped through the hinge of a partly-open door, upon the other side of which a handsome gentleman who had