"I hope you're right," he said. "I hope the whole thing is a mare's nest and for once in my life I trust that the police clues are as wrong as hell. But, anyway, van Heerden is cabling mighty freely—and I want Beale!"
But Beale was unreachable. A visit to his apartment produced no results. The "foreign gentleman" who on the previous day had called on van Heerden had been seen there that morning, but he, too, had vanished, and none of McNorton's watchers had been able to pick him up.
McNorton shifted the direction of his search and dropped into the palatial establishment of Punsonby's. He strolled past the grill-hidden desk which had once held Oliva Cresswell, and saw out of the tail of his eye a stranger in her place and by her side the darkly taciturn Hilda Glaum.
Mr. White, that pompous man, greeted him strangely. As the police chief came into the private office Mr. White half-rose, turned deadly pale and became of a sudden bereft of speech. McNorton recognized the symptoms from long acquaintance with the characteristics of detected criminals, and wondered how deeply this pompous man was committed to whatever scheme was hatching.
"Ah—ah—Mr. McNorton!" stammered White, shaking like a leaf, "won't you sit down, please? To what—to what," he swallowed twice before he could get the words out, "to what am I indebted?"
"Just called in to look you up," said McNorton genially. "Have you been losing any more—registered letters lately?"
Mr. White subsided again into his chair.
"Yes, yes—no, I mean," he said, "no—ah—thank you. It was kind of you to call, inspector——"
"Superintendent," corrected the other good-humouredly.