“Hello,” he called.  “Yes, this is Mr. Whitney.”

A silence ensued during which, of course, I could not gather any idea of what was going on over the wire.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Kennedy, working the hook up and down but receiving no response.  “The fellow caught on.  Something must have happened to Norton, too.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Why,” he replied, “some one just called up Whitney and said that Norton had got away from him.”

“Perhaps they’re trying to keep him out of the way just as they are with us,” I suggested.  “I think the thing is a plant.”

Down the hall, Kennedy stopped and tapped lightly at the door of 810, the de Moche suite.  I think he was surprised when the Senora’s maid opened it.

“Tell Senora de Moche it is Professor Kennedy,” he said quickly, “and that I must see her.”

The maid admitted us into the sitting-room where we had had our first interview with her and a moment later she appeared.  She was evidently not dressed for dinner, although it was almost time, and I saw Kennedy’s eye travel from her to a chair in the corner over which was draped a linen automobile coat and a heavy veil.  Had she been preparing to go somewhere, too?  The door to Alfonso’s room was open and he clearly was not there.  What did it all mean?

“Have you heard anything of a report that the dagger has been found?” demanded Kennedy abruptly.

“Why—­no,” she replied, greatly surprised, apparently.

“You were going out?” asked Kennedy with a significant glance at the coat and veil.

“Only for a little ride with Alfonso, who has gone to hire a car,” she answered quickly.

I felt sure that she had heard something about the dagger.

We had no further excuse for staying and on the way out, now that he had satisfied himself that Whitney was not there, Craig inquired at the office for him.  They could tell us nothing of his whereabouts, except that he had left in his car late in the afternoon in a great hurry.

Kennedy stepped into a telephone booth and called up Lockwood, but no one answered.  Inquiry in the garages in the neighbourhood finally located that at which Lockwood kept his car.  There, all that they could tell us was that the car had been filled with gas and oil as if for a trip.  Lockwood was gone, too.

Kennedy hastily ordered a touring car himself and placed it at a corner of the Prince Edward Albert where he could watch two of the entrances, while I waited on the next corner where I could see the entrance on the other street.

For some time we waited and still she did not come out.  Had she telephoned to Alfonso and had he gone alone?  Perhaps she had already been out and had taken this method of detaining us, knowing that we would wait to watch her.

It must have been a mixture of both motives, for at length I was rewarded by seeing her come cautiously out of the rear entrance of the hotel alone and start to walk hurriedly up the street.  I signalled to Craig who shot down and picked me up.