Foyle never forgot discipline, which is as necessary, or more necessary within limits, in a detective service as in any other specialised business. To have sympathised with Waverley would have been bad policy. He had been made to feel that he had blundered in some way, and the feeling with which he had entered the room, that he was a martyr to duty, had vanished in the conviction that he was simply a fool.
Foyle lit a cigar and fell into a reverie that lasted perhaps ten minutes. He was glad that Waverley was safe, but a little disgusted that he had failed to baffle the precautions taken while he was a prisoner, and so have learnt something that might have been of value in the investigations. Presently he lifted the telephone receiver and ordered a taxicab from the all-night rank in Trafalgar Square. In a little while he was being whirled homeward.
Not till midday next day did he arrive at the Yard. A slip of paper was lying on his desk—the record of a telephone message from the Southampton police. It read
"Halford, Chief Constable, Southampton, to Foyle, C.I.D., London.
"Car No. A.A. 4796 belongs to Mr. J. Price, The Grange, Lyndhurst. Mr. Price is an old resident in the neighbourhood and a man of means. The car is a six-cylinder Napier."
"As I thought," commented Heldon Foyle thoughtfully, tearing the paper into little bits and dropping them into the waste-paper basket. "The number was a false one. They knew that Waverley would have a look at the number. Oh, these people are cunning—cunning."
Green found him, half an hour later, hard at work with the collection of typewritten sheets which formed the book of the case. Foyle was still juggling with his jig-saw puzzle, trying to fit fresh facts in their proper position to old facts.
"Well?" asked the superintendent abruptly.
Green read from a paper in his hand.
"Taylor, who is watching the Duke of Burghley's House in Berkeley Square, has just telephoned that a woman who corresponds to the description of Lola Rachael has just been admitted and is still there."