“You said it, David; but I haven’t any doubt it was a plant, a fake address.”

“I think so, too.”

“Wait here.”  The chief started for the dark little house.  “I’ll ask ’em.”

Three minutes later Leverage was back.

“Said nothing doing,” he imparted laconically.  “No one expected—­no one away who would be coming back—­and then wanted to know who in thunder I was.  They almost dropped dead when I told ’em.  No question about it, that address was a stall.  This dame had something up her sleeve, and took care to see that your taxi man was given a long drive so she’d have plenty of time to croak Warren.”

“Then you think she met him by arrangement, chief?”

“Looks so to me.  Only thing is, where did he get in?”

“That’s what is going to interest us for some time to come, I’m afraid.  And now suppose we go back to town?  I’ll drive my car; I’ll keep behind you and Walters, here.  You ride together in his cab.”

Walters clambered to his seat, and succeeded, after much effort, in starting his frozen motor.  Leverage bulked beside him on the suit-case of the dead man.  The taxi swung cityward, and immediately behind trailed Carroll in his cozy coupe.

As Carroll drove mechanically through the night, he gave himself over to a siege of intensive thought.  The case seemed fraught with unusual interest.  Already it had developed an overplus of extraordinary circumstances, and Carroll had a decided premonition that the road of investigation ahead promised many surprises.

There was every reason why it should.  The social prominence of the dead man, the mysterious disappearance of the handsomely dressed woman—­all the facts of the case pointed to an involved trail.

If it were true that the woman had entered the taxicab alone, that the man had come in later, and that the murder had been committed by the woman in the cab before reaching the railroad crossing, the thing must undoubtedly have been prearranged to the smallest fractional detail.  That being the premise, it was only a logical conclusion that persons other than the woman and the dead man were involved.

Interesting—­decidedly so!  But there was nothing to work on.  Even the suit-case clue had vanished into thin air, so far as its value to the police was concerned.

That suit-case bothered Carroll.  He believed Spike’s story, and was convinced that the suit-case which they had examined out on East End Avenue was the one which the woman had carried from the train to the taxicab.  There again the trail of the dead man and the vanished woman crossed; else why was she carrying his suit-case?

The journey was over before he knew it.  The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building.  Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to the chief’s private office.