"Be silent!" he hissed; "have a care or----"
He paused. There was a loud imperious knocking at the front door.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
PROUT GETS A CLUE.
Sergeant Paul Prout was beginning to come to the conclusion that the Corner House mystery would have to be relegated to the long list of crimes concerning which Scotland-Yard is fain to be silent. At any rate, the matter was utterly beyond him. Given a clue to work on, no man in the force could display more tenacity and skill. But there was nothing to go upon, and Prout was utterly devoid of imagination.
Of course, there was always the chance of coming on the track obliquely. None knew better than Prout how frequently one crime interlocked with another, and how often in looking for one particular criminal another had been arrested.
He came into the inspector's office in answer to a summons. Inspector Manton passed over some papers to his subordinate.
"I want you to read them and act upon them," he said. "You'll have to put that Corner House business out of your head for a day or two at any rate. It appears that a gang of cosmopolitan swindlers have established their headquarters somewhere in Soho, and by means of using several addresses they are getting a tremendous quantity of goods which they proceed to turn into money. Here is one of their advertisements cut from the Standard. You had better answer it, and get in touch with the fellows that way. But nobody can manage that sort of thing better than you."
Prout felt himself quite capable to account for this matter. He proceeded to lay the whole particulars before a friend in the wholesale silver-plate line--just the kind of article the gang of thieves affected--and so procured the genuine address of a genuine trader for the purposes of the capture.