The entire episode was perplexing enough, but what immediately ensued caught me unawares. Without the least warning the trio separated, each hurrying away in a different direction. At this critical juncture a voice said, right at my ear:
"Shall I stick to Burke?—or follow one of the others?"
I jerked my head round to confront Fanshawe, the man detailed to keep Burke under surveillance. I had not observed him before—not surprising, since he had just caught up with me—but I welcomed his presence now.
"Stay with your own man," I shot at him, and turned to look for the Jap. He was gone.
To make the account of this discomfiting episode as brief as possible, I shall say, merely, that out of the three men whom we were watching, two of them walked away from under our very noses without our having the slightest idea in which direction they went. How did they do it? The momentary diversion occasioned by Fanshawe's arrival, the brief distraction of our attention, had been sufficient. He lost track of Burke, and I never had so much as another glimpse of the Jap.
We had the assistance of another headquarters man, too. The one for which I had telephoned showed up immediately after Fanshawe addressed me. The last-named skurried away to find Burke, while Pennington, my other colleague, and I devoted our efforts to catching the Jap.
"One of those Japs has been shadowing me all morning, Pennington," I advised him. "He 's as shifty and evasive as a fox. Fall half a block behind me, and if he shows up again give me a signal and close in. I want him."
But he did n't show up.
It was humiliating to be outwitted by the Oriental—it was the second time for me, too; it would be calamitous to lose Burke. The day dragged along, and when each succeeding minute brought no news of him my anxiety increased by leaps and bounds. Before nightfall, every available man in the department was scouring the city for the ex-secretary.
Subsequent events, however, showed that we might have spared ourselves all the trouble and worry; for one more pertinacious even than Fanshawe clung to Alexander Burke's heels all that day and night.