They parted as though they were friends of long standing.  Theydon was genuinely sorry for this gray-haired woman’s plight, and she evidently regarded him as a kind-hearted and eminently trustworthy young man.  He stood and watched the cab as it bore her off swiftly into the maelstrom of London.  He could not help thinking that seldom had he met one less fitted for the notoriety thrust upon all connected with a much-talked-of crime.

When the press interviewers, the photographers, the hundred and one officials with whom she must be brought in contact, were done with her, poor Miss Beale would retire to her Oxfordshire nook in a state of mental bewilderment that would baffle description.  In one of his books Theydon had endeavored to depict just such a middle-aged spinster confronted with a situation not wholly unlike that which now faced Miss Beale.

He smiled grimly when he realized how far fiction had wandered from fact.  The woman of his imagination had acted with a strength of character, a decisiveness, that outwitted and confounded certain scheming personages in the story.  How different was the reality!  Miss Beale, rushing across London in a taxi, reminded him of nothing more masterful than a cage-bird turned loose in a tempest.

He was about to reenter the mansions, meaning to telephone to both the Fortescue Square house and the Old Broad Street offices, and ask for instant news of Mr. Forbes in either locality.  He was so preoccupied that he failed to notice an approaching taxicab, though the driver was signaling, and even tooted a motor horn loudly in the endeavor to attract his attention.

He did, however, catch his own name, and halted.

“Beg pardon, sir, but you are Mr. Theydon, aren’t you?” said the man.

Then Theydon recognized Evans, the taxidriver, who had brought him from Fortescue Square.

“Hullo!” he cried.  “Any news of the gray car?”

“Yes, sir, I think so,” was the somewhat surprising answer.  “When I dropped you last night I got a fare to Euston.  Then I took a gentleman to the Langham, an’, as I felt like a snack, I pulled into the nearest cab rank.  I was having some corfee an’ a sandwich when I ’appened to speak about the gray car to one of ahr chaps.  ‘That’s odd,’ he said.  ‘Quarter of an hour ago I had a theater job to Langham Plice, an’ a gray landaulette stopped in front of the Chinese Embassy.  It kem along from the east side, too.’  He didn’t notice the number, sir, so there may be nothink in it, after all, but I thought you might like to hear wot my pal said.”

“Was the car empty?  Did it call for some one at the Embassy?”

“That’s the queer part of it, sir.  I axed pertic’ler.  This gray car brought a gentleman, a small, youngish man, ’oo skipped up the Embassy steps like a lamplighter, and went in afore you could s’y ‘knife.’  Somebody might ha’ bin watchin’ for him through the keyhole, the door was opened that quick.  Then the car went off.  My friend wouldn’t ha’ given a second thought to it if the gentleman hadn’t vanished like a jack-in-the-box.  That’s w’y he remembered the color of the car.”