“That is the one definite thing I do know—­that it isn’t!” he said positively.  “It is nothing of that kind.  It was half-past ten o’clock at night when I met him, and he said that he had intended going back for the package if it had been safe to do so.  Deposit vaults are not open at that hour.  The package is, or was, if they have not already got it, readily accessible—­and at any hour.  Now go over everything again, every detail that passed between you and Travers.  He let you know that he was back in New York by means of a ‘personal,’ you said.  What else was in that ‘personal’ besides the telephone number and the hour you were to call him?  Anything?”

“Nothing that will help us any,” she replied colourlessly.  “There were simply the words ‘northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place,’ and the signature that we had agreed upon, the two first and two last letters of the alphabet transposed—­BAZY.”

“I see,” said Jimmie Dale quickly.  “And over the ’phone he completed his message.  Clever enough!”

“Yes,” she said.  “In that way, if any one were listening, or overhead the plan, there could be little harm come of it, for the essential feature of all, the place of rendezvous, was not mentioned.  It has not been Travers’ fault that this happened—­and in spite of every precaution it has cost him his life.  He wanted nothing to give them a clew to my whereabouts; he was trying to guard against the slightest evidence that would associate us one with the other.  He even warned me over the ’phone not to tell him how, where, or the mode of life I was living.  And naturally, he dared give me no particulars about himself.  I was simply to select a third party whom I could trust, and to follow out his instructions, which were those that I sent to you in my letter.”

Jimmie Dale began to pace nervously up and down the room.

“Nothing else?” he queried, a little blankly.

“Nothing else,” she said monotonously.

“But since last night, since you knew that things had gone wrong,” he persisted, “surely you traced that telephone number—­the one you called up?”

“Yes,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders in a tired way.  “Naturally I did that—­but, like everything else, it amounted to nothing.  He telephoned from Makoff’s pawnshop on that alley off Thompson Street, and—­”

“Where!” Jimmie Dale, suddenly stock-still, almost shouted the word.  “He telephoned from—­where!  Say that again!”

She looked at him in amazement, half rising from her chair.

“Jimmie, what is it?” she cried.  “You don’t mean that—­”

He was beside her now, his hands pressed upon her shoulders, his face flushed.

“Box number four-two-eight!” He laughed out hysterically in his excitement.  “John Johansson—­box number four-two-eight!  And like a fool I never thought of it!  Don’t you see?  Don’t you know now yourself?  The underground post office!”