I clung to the hand-rail as the wagon swayed back and forth or bounded into the air as it struck the car-tracks, and stared out into the night, struggling to understand.  Could Godfrey be right?  But of course he was right!  Some intuition told me that; and yet, how had Crochard managed to substitute himself for the French detective?  Where was Pigot?  Was he lying somewhere in a crumpled heap, with a tiny wound upon his hand?  But that could not be—­Grady and Simmonds had been with him all the evening!  And could that aged Frenchman with the white, fine, wrinkled skin be also the bronzed and virile personage whom I had known as Felix Armand?  My reason reeled before the seeming impossibility of it—­and yet, somehow, I knew that Godfrey was right!

The wagon came to a stop so suddenly that I was thrown violently against the man next to me, and the reserves, leaping out, swept me before them.  We were in front of the Day and Night Bank, and at a word from Grady, the men spread into a close cordon before the building.

Another police wagon stood at the curb, with the driver still on the seat, but as Grady started toward it, a figure appeared at the door of the bank and shouted to us—­shouted in inarticulate words which I could not understand.  But Grady seemed to understand them, and went up the steps two at a time, with an agility surprising in so large a man, and which I was hard put to it to match.  A little group stood at one side of the vestibule looking down at some one extended on a cushioned seat.  And, an instant later, I saw that it was Simmonds, lying on his back, his eyes open and staring apparently at the ceiling.

But, at the second glance, I saw that the eyes were sightless.

Grady elbowed his way savagely through the group.

“Where’s Kelly?” he demanded.

At the words, a white-faced man in uniform arose from a chair into which he had plainly dropped exhausted.

“Oh, there you are!” and Grady glowered at him ferociously.  “Now tell me what happened—­and tell it quick!”

“Why, sir,” stammered Kelly, “there wasn’t anything happened.  Only when we stopped out there at the curb and I got down and opened the door, there wasn’t nobody in the wagon but Mr. Simmonds.  I spoke to him and he didn’t answer—­and then I touched him and he kind of fell over—­and then I rushed in here and ’phoned the station; but they said you’d already started for the bank; and then we went out and brought him in here—­and that’s all I know, sir.”

“You didn’t hear anything—­no sound of a struggle?”

“Not a sound, sir; not a single sound.”

“And you haven’t any idea where the other man got out?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Simmonds had a little valise with him—­did you notice it?”

“Yes, sir; and I looked for it in the wagon, but it ain’t there.”