“May I come, too?” the Professor asked timidly.  “This matter has upset me thoroughly.  I cannot stay here without Craig.”

“Come, by all means,” Quest assented.  “I will drive you down in your car, if you like.”

The Professor hurried away to get his coat and hat, and a few minutes later they started off.  In Broadway, they left the car at a garage and made their way up a back street, which enabled them to enter the house at the side entrance.  They passed upstairs into the sitting-room.  Quest fetched the pocket wireless and laid it down on the table.  The Professor examined it with interest.

“You are marvellous, my friend,” he declared.  “With all these resources of science at your command, it seems incredible that you should be in the position you are.”

Quest nodded coolly.

“I’ll get out of that all right,” he asserted confidently.  “The only trouble is that while I am dodging about like this I cannot devote myself properly to the task of running down this fiend of the Hands.  Just one moment, Professor, while I send off a message,” he continued, opening the little instrument.  “Where are you, Lenora?” he signalled.  “Send me word and I will fetch you.  I am in my own house for the present.  Let me know that you are safe.”

The Professor leaned back, smoking one of Quest’s excellent cigars.  He was beginning to show signs of the liveliest interest.

[Illustration:  Quest and Laura change clothes so that Quest may make his escape.]

[Illustration:  One of the club’s Butlers turns in A fire alarm.]

“Quest,” he said, “I wish I could induce you to dismiss this extraordinary supposition of yours concerning my servant Craig.  The man has been with me for the best part of twenty years.  He saved my life in South America; we have travelled in all parts of the world.  He has proved himself to be exemplary, a faithful and devoted servant.  I thought it absurd, Mr. Quest, when you were suspected of these crimes.  I should think it even more ridiculous to associate Craig with them in any way whatever.”

“Then perhaps you will tell me,” Quest suggested, “where he is now, and why he has gone away?  That does not look like complete innocence, does it?”

The Professor sighed.

“Appearances are nothing,” he declared.  “Craig is a man of highly nervous susceptibilities.  The very idea of being suspected of anything so terrible would be enough to drive him almost out of his mind.  I am convinced that we shall find him at home presently, with some reasonable explanation of his absence.”

Quest paced the room for a few moments, moodily.

There was a certain amount of reason in the Professor’s point of view.

“Anyway, I cannot stay here much longer, unless I mean to go back to the Tombs,” he declared.