"Doctor Gant," Crawshay replied, "has booked a passage back in the American boat which sails for Liverpool early to-morrow morning. We shall escort him there, and his effects will be searched once more in Liverpool. Otherwise, we have no intention of detaining him. He and Miss Beverley were simply the tools of the other man."
"And the other man?"
"He has shown no signs of making any move whatsoever. He lives, to all appearance, the perfectly normal life of a man of leisure. I understand that he is entirely a newcomer to this sort of business, but he is, without a doubt, the most modern thing in secret service. He lives quite openly at a small suite in the Savoy Court. He never makes the slightest concealment about any of his movements. We know how he has spent every second of his time since we first took up the search, and I can assure you that there is not a single suspicious incident recorded against him."
"You are satisfied," Mr. Brown asked, "with the aid which you are getting from Scotland Yard?"
"Absolutely," Crawshay declared. "Brightman, too—the man who came down with me from Liverpool—has done excellent work."
"And notwithstanding all this," was the somewhat grave criticism, "you have not the slightest idea where these documents are to be found?"
"Not the slightest," Crawshay confessed. "All that I do feel convinced of is that they have not left the country."
The great man leaned back a little wearily in his chair. There were some decoded cables, lying under a paper weight by his side, imploring him in the strongest possible terms to make use of every means within his power to solve this mystery,—a personal appeal from a man whose good will might sway the balance of the future. He was used to wonderful service in every department he controlled. His present sense of impotence was galling.
"Tell me, Mr. Crawshay," he asked, "how long was the gap of time between your losing sight of Jocelyn Thew and when you picked him up in London?"
"Very short indeed," was the emphatic reply. "Jocelyn Thew must have left the City of Boston at about eight o'clock on Monday morning. He met Gant at five o'clock that evening at Crewe station. Gant had come direct from Frisby, the little village near Chester where he had left the body of Phillips. It is obvious, therefore, that Gant had the papers with him when he joined Jocelyn Thew. They travelled to London together but parted at Euston, Gant going to a cheap hotel in the vicinity of Regent Street, whilst Thew drove to the Savoy. Gant called at the Savoy Hotel at nine o'clock that evening, and the two men dined together in the grill room and took a box at a music hall—the Alhambra. Up to this time neither of them had received a visitor or dispatched a message—Thew, in fact, had spent more than an hour in the barber's shop. They returned from the Alhambra together, went up to Thew's rooms, had a drink and separated half an hour later. This, of course, is in a sense posthumous information, but Scotland Yard have it tabulated down to the slightest detail, and we are unable to find a single suspicious circumstance in connection with the movements of either man. At four o'clock the following morning, when both men were asleep in their rooms, the cordon was drawn around them. Since then they haven't had a chance."