"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agency, being the one whereat he aforetime procured those spies to set about the Harley house—spies long since withdrawn.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."