"After him! After that devil, and a thousand pounds to the man that gets
him!" he managed to gasp as they rushed to him and ripped loose the gag.
"He was here when we came! He has been in the house for hours. Get him!
get him! get him!"

They surged from the room and up the stairs like a pack of stampeded
animals; they raced through the hall and bore down on the
picture-gallery in a body, and, whirling open the now closed door, went
tumbling headlong in.

The light was still burning. At the far end of the room a window was
wide open, and the curtains of it fluttered in the wind. A collection of
empty cases and caskets lay on the middle table, but man and jewels were
alike gone! Once again the Vanishing Cracksman had lived up to his
promise, up to his reputation, up to the very letter of his name, and
for all Mr. Maverick Narkom's care and shrewdness, "Forty Faces" had
"turned the trick" and Scotland Yard was "done!"




III


Through all the night its best men sought him, its dragnets fished for
him, its tentacles groped into every hole and corner of London in quest
of him, but sought and fished and groped in vain. They might as well
have hoped to find last summer's partridges or last winter's snow as any
trace of him. He had vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, and no