an American crook, whose real name is Vankin; Merrifield, as you know, is
Mr. Delkin's secretary; the other man is one Otto Schmall, a German
chemist, and a most remarkably clever person, who has a shop and a
chemical manufactory in Whitechapel. He's an expert in poison--and I
think you will have some interesting matters to deal with when you come
to tackle his share. Well, that's plain fact; and now you want to know
how I--and Mr. Rayner--found all this out."

"Chiefly you," murmured Rayner, "chiefly you!"

"You had better let your minds go back to the morning of the 13th May
last," continued Miss Slade, paying no apparent heed to this
interruption. "On that morning I arrived at Mr. Fullaway's office at my
usual time, ten o'clock, to find that Mr. Fullaway had departed
suddenly, earlier in the morning, for Hull. I at once guessed why he had
gone--I knew that Mr. James Allerdyke, in charge of the Princess
Nastirsevitch's jewels, was to have landed at Hull the night before, and
I concluded that Mr. Fullaway had set off to meet him. But Mr. Fullaway
has a bad habit of leaving letters and telegrams lying about, for any one
to see, and within a few minutes I found on his desk a telegram from Mr.
Marshall Allerdyke, dispatched early that morning from Hull, saying that
his cousin had died suddenly during the night. That, of course,
definitely explained Mr. Fullaway's departure, and it also made me
wonder, knowing all I did know, if the jewels were safe.

"This, I repeat, was about ten to half-past ten o'clock. About twelve
o'clock of that morning, the 13th, Mr. Van Koon, whom I knew as a
resident in the hotel, and a frequent caller on Mr. Fullaway, came in. He
wanted Mr. Fullaway to cash a cheque for him. I told him that I could do
that, and I took his cheque, wrote out one of my own and went up town to