“There it is!” she exclaimed.  “Lisette Beaurepaire, 911 Bernard Street, Bloomsbury—­I knew it was Bloomsbury.  That’s where she lived when I engaged her, anyhow—­but then her sick mother mayn’t live there!  The man who met her at Hull, who said he was her brother, didn’t say where the mother lived, except that it was in London.”

“We must go to Bernard Street, anyway, at once,” said Fullaway.  “We may get some information there.”

But such information as they got on the door-step of 911 Bernard Street was scanty and useless.  The house was a typical Bloomsbury lodging-place, let off in floors and rooms.  Its proprietor, summoned from a neighbouring house, recollected, with considerable difficulty and after consultation of a penny pocket-book, that he had certainly let a top-floor room to a young Frenchwoman about a year ago, but he had never caught her name properly, and simply had her noted down as Mamselle.  She had paid her rent regularly, and had remained in the house five weeks—­that was all he knew about her.  Had he ever seen her since?  Not that he knew of—­in fact, he shouldn’t know her if he saw her—­they were all pretty much alike, these young Frenchwomen.  Did he know where she came from to his house—­where she went from his house?  Not he! he knew no more than what he had just told.

“What now?” asked Allerdyke as the three searchers paced dejectedly up the street.  “This is doing no good—­it’s worse than the Hull affair.  However, there’s one thing suggests itself to me.  Didn’t you say,” he went on, turning to Celia, “that you had some very good testimonials with this young woman?  If so, and you’ve still got them, we might trace her in that way.”

“I had some, and I may have them still, but you saw just now what an awful mess all my letters and papers are in,” replied Celia, almost tearfully.  “I always do get things like that into hopeless confusion—­I never know what to destroy and what to keep, and they accumulate so.  It would take hours upon hours to look for those letters, and in the meantime—­”

“In the meantime,” remarked Fullaway as he signalled to a taxi-cab, “there’s only one thing to be done.  We must go to the police.  Get in, both of you, and let’s make haste to New Scotland Yard.”

Once more Allerdyke received an impression of the American’s usefulness and practical acquaintance with things.  Fullaway seemed to know exactly what to do, whom to approach, how to go about the business in hand; within a few minutes all three were closeted with a high official of the Criminal Investigation Department, a man who might have been a barrister, a medical specialist, or a scientist of distinction, and who maintained an unmoved countenance and a perfect silence while Fullaway unfolded the story.  He and Allerdyke had held a brief consultation as they drove from Bloomsbury to Whitehall, and they had decided that as things had now reached a critical stage it would be best to tell the authorities everything.