“No.  Directly the cab arrives I am going to wait for nothing.”

Indeed, he paced up and down the room like a wild beast caged, while call after call was sent to neighbouring cab ranks, for a long time without result.  What did it mean, his wife’s failure to answer the telephone?  It might mean that neither she nor their one servant nor Dan was in the house.  And if they were not in the house at this hour of the night, where could they possibly be?  This it might mean, or—­something worse.

A thousand and one possibilities, hideous, fantastic, appalling, flashed through his mind.  He was beginning to learn what Zani Chada had meant when he had said:  “I have followed your career with interest.”

At last a taxi was found, and the man instructed over the ’phone to proceed immediately to Limehouse station.  He seemed so long in coming that when at last the cab was heard to pause outside, Kerry could not trust himself to speak to the driver, but directed a sergeant to give him the address.  He entered silently and closed the door.

A steady drizzle of rain was falling.  It had already dispersed the fog, so that he might hope with luck to be home within the hour.  As a matter of fact, the man performed the journey in excellent time, but it seemed to his passenger that he could have walked quicker, such was the gnawing anxiety within him and the fear which prompted him to long for wings.

Instructing the cabman to wait, Kerry unlocked the front door and entered.  He had noted a light in the dining room window, and entering, he found his wife awaiting him there.  She rose as he entered, with horror in her comely face.

“Dan!” she whispered.  “Dan! where is ye’r mackintosh?”

“I didn’t take it,” he replied, endeavouring to tell himself that his apprehensions had been groundless.  “But how was it that you did not answer the telephone?”

“What do ye mean, Dan?” Mary Kerry stared, her eyes growing wider and wider.  “The boy answered, Dan.  He set out wi’ ye’r mackintosh full an hour and a half since.”

“What!”

The truth leaped out at Kerry like an enemy out of ambush.

“Who sent that message?”

“Someone frae the Yard, to tell the boy to bring ye’r mackintosh
alone at once.   Dan!   Dan------”

She advanced, hands outstretched, quivering, but Kerry had leaped out into the narrow hallway.  He raised the telephone receiver, listened for a moment, and then jerked it back upon the hook.

“Dead line!” he muttered.  “Someone has been at work with a wire-cutter outside the house!”

His wife came out to where he stood, and, clenching his teeth very grimly, he took her in his arms.  She was shaking as if palsied.

“Mary dear,” he said, “pray with all your might that I am given strength to do my duty.”

She looked at him with haggard, tearless eyes.

“Tell me the truth:  ha’ they got my boy?”