“Drive slowly,” I told him.  “I think we shall be followed.”

And I was right; in a few minutes there were two cars dogging our wheel-tracks.  I had no doubt concerning the Rhamda; but I couldn’t understand the other.  At No. 288 Chatterton Place we stopped and I alighted.  The Rhamda’s car passed, then the other.  Neither stopped.  Both disappeared round the corner.  I took the numbers; then I went into the house.  In about a half hour a car drew up at the curb.  I stepped to the window.  It was the car that had tracked the Rhamda’s.  The stubby individual stepped out; without ceremony he ran up the steps and opened the door.  It was a bit disconcerting, I think, for both.  He was plain and blunt—­and honest.

“Well,” he said, “where’s Watson?  Who are you?  What do you want?”

“That,” I answered, “is a question for both of us.  Who are you, and what do you want?  Where is Watson?”

Just then his eyes dropped and his glance fell and eyes widened.

“My name is Jerome,” he said simply.  “Has something happened to Watson?  Who are you?”

We were standing in the library; I made an indication towards the other room.  “In there,” I said.  “My name is Wendel.”

He took off his hat and ran the back of his hand across his forehead.

“So that pair got him, too!  I was afraid of them all the while.  And I had to be away.  Do you know how they did it?  What’s the working of their game?  It’s devilish and certainly clever.  They played that boy for a year; they knew they would get him in the end.  So did I.

“He was a fine lad, a fine lad.  I knew this morning when I came down from Nevada that they had him.  Found your duds.  A stranger.  House looked queer.  But I had hopes he might have gone over to see his girl.  Just thought I’d wander over to Berkeley.  Found that bird Rhamda under a palm tree watching the Holcomb bungalow.  It was the first time I’d seen him since that day things went amiss with the professor.  In about ten minutes you came out.  I stayed with him while he tracked you back here; I followed him back down town and lost him.  Tell me about Watson.”

He sat down; during my recital he spoke not a word.  He consumed one cigar after another; when I stopped for a moment he merely nodded his head and waited until I continued.  He was sturdy and frank, of an iron way and vast common sense.  I liked him.  When I had finished he remained silent; his grief was of a solid kind! he had liked poor Watson.

“I see,” he said.  “It is as I thought.  He told you more than he ever told me.”

“He never told you?”

“Not much.  He was a strange lad—­about the loneliest one I’ve ever seen.  There was something about him from the very first that was not natural; I couldn’t make him out.  You say it is the ring.  He always wore it.  I laid it to this Rhamda.  He was always meeting him.  I could never understand it.  Try as I would, I could not get a trace of the phantom.”