I stepped into the street with a feeling of mortification. Mr. Kenneth Dowsett had given me the slip again. Rejoining Devlin, I related to him what had passed.
"What are you going to do next?" he asked.
"I am puzzled," I replied, "and hardly know what to do."
"That is not like you," said Devlin. "Come, I will assist you. Mr. Kenneth Dowsett seems to be in a hurry. The more reason for spirit and increased vigilance on our part. Observe, I say our part. I am growing interested in this case, and am curious to see the end of it. If Mr. Dowsett has gone back to London, we must follow him there. If he has gone to some other place, we must follow him to some other place."
"But how to find that out?"
"He was driven to the station in a carriage. We must get hold of the driver. At present we are ignorant whether he has gone by the South-Eastern or the London, Chatham, and Dover. We will go and inquire at the cab-ranks."
But although we spent fully an hour and a half in asking questions of every driver of a carriage we saw, we could ascertain no news of the carriage which had driven Mr. Dowsett and his family from Athelstan Road. I was in despair, and was about to give up the search and return disconsolately to the Nayland Rock, when a bare-footed boy ran up to me, and asked whether I wasn't looking for "the cove wot drove a party from Athelstan Road."
"Yes," I said excitedly. "Do you know him?"
"O, I knows him," said the boy. "Bill Foster he is. I 'elped him up with the boxes. There was one little box the gent wouldn't let us touch. There was somethink 'eavy in it, and the gent give me a copper. Thank yer, sir."
He was about to scuttle off with the sixpence I gave him, when I seized him, not by the collar, because he had none on, but by the neck where the collar should have been.