The Pompadour Private Hotel, like most establishments of its class in Bayswater, was a place of peace and of comparative solitude during the greater part of the day.  It was busy enough up to ten o’clock in the morning, and it began to be busy enough again by six o’clock in the evening, but from ten to six more than two-thirds of its denizens were not to be found within its walls.  The business man had gone to the City; the professional women had departed to their offices; nothing of humanity but a few elderly widows and spinsters, and an old gentleman or two were left in the various rooms.  Everything, therefore, was quiet enough when the chief, accompanied by Chettle, drove up, entered the hall, and asked to see the manager and manageress.  As for Allerdyke and Appleyard, who naturally felt considerable dislike to appearing on this particular scene of operations, they were a few hundred yards away, walking about just within the confines of Kensington Gardens, and waiting with more or less patience until the police officials came to them with news of the result of the search.

The manageress of the hotel, a smart lady who wore dignified black gowns all day long—­stuff in the morning, and silk at night as if she were a barrister, gradually advancing in grandeur—­gazed at the two callers with some suspicion as she ushered them into a private room at the back of her office.  The chief, an irreproachably attired man, might have been an army gentleman, she thought; an instinctive wonder rose in her mind as to whether he was not some elderly man of standing who, accompanied by his valet, desired to arrange about a suite of rooms.  But his first words gave her an unpleasant shock—­she felt for all the world as if somebody had suddenly turned a shower of ice-cold water on her.

“Now, ma’am,” said the chief, “your husband the manager is out, and you are in sole and responsible charge, I understand?  Pray don’t be alarmed—­this is nothing that concerns you or your affairs, personally, and we will endeavor to arrange everything so that you have no annoyance.  The fact of the case is, we are police officers from the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard, and I hold two warrants, just granted by a justice of peace, which are in relation to an inmate of your hotel.”

The manageress dropped into a chair and stared at her visitors.  Police officers?  Warrants?  Justices?  It was the first time in her highly respectable Bayswater existence that she had ever been brought into contact with these dreadful things.  And—­an inmate of her establishment!

“Oh, you must be mistaken!” she exclaimed in horror-stricken accents.  “A warrant?—­that means you want to arrest somebody.  An inmate—­surely none of my servants—­”

“Nothing to do with servants,” interrupted the chief.  “I said an inmate.  Pray don’t be alarmed.  We want a young lady who is known to you as Miss Mary Slade.”

The manageress got up as quickly as she had sat down.  For one moment she gazed at her visitor as if he had demanded her very life—­the next her lip curled in scorn.