"Humph! This should simplify our task," was Mr. Gryce's comment,
as he handed the note over to Sweetwater. "You can easily find out
if the lady, now on the point of departure, can be identified with
the one described by Mr. McElroy. If she can, I am ready to meet
her anywhere."

"Here goes then!" cried Sweetwater, and quickly left the room.

When he returned, it was not with his most hopeful air.

"The cloak doesn't help," he declared. "No one remembers the cloak.
But the time of Mrs. Watkins' arrival was all right. She came in
directly on the heels of this catastrophe."

"She did! Sweetwater, I will see her. Manage it for me at once."

"The clerk says that it had better be upstairs. She is a very
sensitive woman. There might be a scene, if she were intercepted
on her way out."

"Very well." But the look which the old detective threw at his
bandaged legs was not without its pathos.

And so it happened that just as Mrs. Watkins was watching the
wheeling out of her trunks, there appeared in the doorway before
her, an elderly gentleman, whose expression, always benevolent,
save at moments when benevolence would be quite out of keeping with
the situation, had for some reason, so marked an effect upon her,
that she coloured under his eye, and, indeed, showed such