Mr. Headland shook his head dolefully.
"Nothing to be learned here. I think I'd like to get that address, the old woman's, you know," he added, meekly.
"Oh, that! Still thinking of that elderly Venus, eh? Well, I'll go and find Thompson for you myself," said the now openly sneering Mr. Belthouse.
"Any ideas, old chap?" whispered Mr. Narkom, as his ally bent down and touched another few flakes of plaster-like white powder.
"Bushels," was the laconic reply. "But when a mouse gets into a trap, what does it do?"
"Why, stays in, of course!" said the mystified Narkom, and Cleek gave a little satisfied laugh as he lurched to the end of the hall where Mr. Charles Galveston Belthouse, in a supremely bad temper, arrived a moment later in company with the stalwart commissionaire, Thompson.
"No go, sir; no sign of that blessed cab, and the taxi men never noticed it on the stand before. They are rare in these parts nowadays, sir. I hardly expected to get one, only the good lady was set on it. Said she wouldn't go near one of those dangerous motor things, and the way she sniffed even at the cabby——!"
A queer little smile crept round Mr. Headland's mouth.
"It's of no importance, my man. I don't think we shall want either the cab or the good lady again."
The man returned to his own post, and Cleek followed the secretary from the gallery. But a little distance away he stopped short, feeling in his pocket, then uttered a little cry of dismay.