At last, however, just as they emerged on to the main street of Pinner, still “old-world,” if in a somewhat more self-conscious manner than of yore, they struck oil. They found a policeman who seemed to have some memory of Miss Arnell and a man who took her off the bus.

“Yes,” he said. “I remember a fellow taking a girl off a bus. Just along the main street here, it was, just by the bus-stop down there. She was a pretty girl”—here Cunningham swiftly produced a portrait of Violet Arnell with which he had been careful to provide himself, and it was rapidly identified by the constable.

“What happened to her?” Cunningham asked with some eagerness.

“She was on the bus, as I said, and a young fellow came along in a low racing car—one of them noisy things that makes a roar as they go along,” said the constable. “He stopped the car just in front of the bus, and jumped out. He hopped on to the bus, and must have spoken to her, for she got off the bus with him.”

“Did she seem to know him?”

“Now you mention it, I shouldn’t have said she did.”

“Why not?” Cunningham was more eager than ever now. It began to look as if he was getting on to the trail with a vengeance. He had scarcely dared to hope that he would do so, his successive failures on the long road having driven a rod of pessimism into his soul.

“Well.” The policeman scratched his head thoughtfully. “’Tis difficult to lay my tongue on any exact reason. But I think it looked as if she was arguing with him, saying ‘What the devil do you want with me?’—if you understand what I mean.”

“I think I do,” said Cunningham, and prepared to play his trump card. He fished in his pocket and produced a photograph of Moses Moss.

“Was this the man?” he asked.

Again the slow policeman scratched his head.

“It might be,” he said cautiously.

“What do you mean, it might be?” asked Cunningham in irritated tones.

“I mean what I say, Sergeant,” responded the other. “It’s not easy to identify anybody in the light of these lamps when they’re nigh on fifty feet away.”

“Still, you identified the lady without any difficulty,” Cunningham objected.

“Ah, but that’s different. You see,” he said with what was almost a leer, “young ladies don’t grow beards.”

“Beards?” Cunningham was almost startled by this new item of information.

“Yes. The young fellow had a beard. One of them little black things, like a tuft of grass stuck on the end of their chins,” explained the constable.

“Black?”

“Yes.”

Cunningham rapidly sketched in a neat little beard on the photograph, and handed it to the policeman again.

“What about it now?” he asked. “Would you say that it looked like him now?”