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156 "If Alan isn't mixed up in that somehow," he declared, "I'm a sorry failure as a prophet of woe and disaster!"

There was as much intuitive apprehension as humour responsible for this remark; witness the fact that, on landing, he risked the delay required to turn aside and have a look at the fire.

It proved to be situated in the heart of a squalid slum. The firemen had already given up all hope, apparently, of saving anything but the adjoining buildings; that they had done their best was shown by the tangle of apparatus that cumbered the space within the fire-lines.

Mr. Barcus viewed the scene for some moments; then, tolerably satisfied that there was nothing here to excuse his "hunch" about Alan Law, was on the point of instructing his chauffeur to drive on when his attention was attracted by a curious movement in the throng of sightseers. A number of men began to force their way in a V-shaped wedge through the throng, making toward its very heart, the point on the fire-lines nearest the burning building.

What this meant, Mr. Barcus had not the slightest idea. But his attention was fixed by the face of a man who was following in the hollow of the V—an evil white face that seemed somehow vaguely familiar. It was several seconds before Barcus identified it as the face of the man who had borne Judith Trine