“No, Leslie, no. Louie wouldn’t look at him. That’s not the clue,” said Uncle Luke.
Volume Three—Chapter Sixteen.
The Needle in a Bottle of Hay.
A week of anxiety, with the breaks in it of interviews with Sergeant Parkins, who had very little to communicate; but still that little was cogent.
He had been down to Hakemouth, and by careful inquiry had tracked the missing pair to Plymouth, where he had missed them. But, after the fashion of a huntsman, he made long casts round and picked up the clue at Exeter, where a porter remembered them from what sounded like an altercation in a second-class compartment, where a dark young lady was in tears, and the “gent” who was with her said something to her sharply in a foreign tongue. Pressed as to what it was like, he said it sounded as if the gent said “Taisey.”
There the sergeant had lost the clue; but he had learned enough to satisfy himself that the fugitives had been making for London, unless they had branched off at Bristol, which was hardly likely.
“Come up to London,” said Leslie. “Well, that is what we surmised before we applied to you.”
“Exactly, sir; but I have nearly made your surmise a certainty.”