“One moment,” struck in Theydon.  “I have something to say before you decide on any definite action.  I need hardly inflict on you, Mr. Furneaux, an explanation of my silence hitherto.  I don’t even apologize for it.  Faced by a similar dilemma tomorrow I should probably take the same line.  But, to adopt your own simile, now that Mr. Forbes has come out of his shell, and admits his presence here on Monday night, my self-imposed restrictions cease.  In the first place, then, Miss Beale came here this morning—­”

“Excellent!  I wondered who the lady was,” put in Furneaux.

“And, secondly, the gray car which pursued me on Monday seems to have been partly identified later.  A car resembling it in every detail deposited some one at the Chinese Legation in Portland Place, at an hour which corresponds closely with its presence here.”

“Ah, that is important!  I like that!  I wasn’t far wrong when I sensed you as an absolute carrier of clew-germs in this affair,” cried Furneaux.

“The Chinese Embassy!” gasped Forbes.  “What car?  And why should any car pursue you?  Do you mean that you were followed on leaving my house?”

It was lamentable to watch the inroad which each successive shock was making on Forbes’s physical resources, but Theydon affected to ignore the new fright in his eyes, and told him what had happened.  Although he could see that Furneaux was in a fever of impatience to learn the later news, he thought that Forbes should know the facts in view of the remarkable statement that he had visited the Chinese Embassy that morning.

In one respect, the recital was a test of the millionaire’s professed readiness to deal candidly with the police.  Theydon was half inclined to believe that the other was still wishful to conceal that part of the day’s doings.  But he was mistaken.  When he had finished his own story, and given the taxi-man’s version of the gray car’s appearance in Portland Place, Forbes threw out his hands in a gesture of despair.

“If the Embassy people are playing me false I do not know whom to trust,” he said brokenly; “I have just come from there, and they assure me that if Wong Li Fu and his gang are in London they are absolutely ignorant of the fact.”

“Pooh!” cried Furneaux, snapping a thumb and forefinger.  “Don’t worry about that!  Put yourself in the position of the Chinese Ambassador.  He can’t even guess who may be the ruler of China from one day to another.  Yesterday it was an old woman, today a dictator, tomorrow the mob; who can foretell what shape the lava erupted from a volcano will take?  Bet you a new hat, Mr. Forbes, that the minute the embassy heard of Mrs. Lester’s murder they put two and two together and kept a sharp eye on these mansions and on your house.  That gray car is nothing more nor less than a red herring accidentally drawn across the trail.  Some cute Chinaman said ’Hallo! that murdered woman is the wife of Forbes’s agent in Shanghai.  Now, let’s see what Forbes is doing, and who visits him, and perhaps we’ll learn something.’  Want a bet?”