‘notion’ shop and buy these blue spectacles, and to a hatter’s for these caps—­of which I regret to observe that yours is too big.  He was rather a long while in the barber’s, and finally came out, as you saw him, with no mustache.  This was a good indication.  It made it plainer than ever that he had believed my warning as to the police descent on the house in Gold Street and its frequenters; which was right and proper, for what I told him was quite true.  The rest you know.  He cabbed to the station, and so did I.”

“And now perhaps,” I said, “after giving me the character of a thief wanted by the Manchester police, forcibly depriving me of my hat in exchange for this all-too-large cap, and rushing me off out of London without any definite idea of when I’m coming back, perhaps you’ll tell me what we’re after?”

Hewitt laughed.  “You wanted to join in, you know,” he said, “and you must take your luck as it comes.  As a matter of fact there is scarcely anything in my profession so uninteresting and so difficult as this watching and following business.  Often it lasts for weeks.  When we alight, we shall have to follow Wilks again, under the most difficult possible conditions, in the country.  There it is often quite impossible to follow a man unobserved.  It is only because it is the only way that I am undertaking it now.  As to what we’re after, you know that as well as I—­the Quinton ruby.  Wilks has hidden it, and without his help it would be impossible to find it.  We are following him so that he will find it for us.”

“He must have hidden it, I suppose, to avoid sharing with Hollams?”

“Of course, and availed himself of the fact of Leamy having carried the bag to direct Hollams’s suspicion to him.  Hollams found out by his repeated searches of Leamy and his lodgings, that this was wrong, and this morning evidently tried to persuade the ruby out of Wilks’ possession with a revolver.  We saw the upshot of that.”

Kedderby Station was about forty miles out.  At each intermediate stopping station Hewitt watched earnestly, but Wilks remained in the train.  “What I fear,” Hewitt observed, “is that at Kedderby he may take a fly.  To stalk a man on foot in the country is difficult enough; but you can’t follow one vehicle in another without being spotted.  But if he’s so smart as I think, he won’t do it.  A man traveling in a fly is noticed and remembered in these places.”

He did not take a fly.  At Kedderby we saw him jump out quickly and hasten from the station.  The train stood for a few minutes, and he was out of the station before we alighted.  Through the railings behind the platform we could see him walking briskly away to the right.  From the ticket collector we ascertained that Radcot lay in that direction, three miles off.