They reached the Assembly Hall. The lobby, buzzing with delegates, Secretariat, journalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was like a startled hive. The delegates from Cuba, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay, temporarily at one, were informing the eager throng who crowded round them that Dr. Chang had left the Bergues hotel, after a chat and a whisky with the delegate from Paraguay, at twelve-thirty precisely. The delegate from Paraguay had gone out with him and had left him on the Pont des Bergues. He had said that he was going to cross this bridge and stroll round the old citÉ before going to bed, as he greatly admired the picturesque night aspect of these ancient streets and houses that clustered round the cathedral. He had then, presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. (“These alleys,” as a local guide-book coldly puts it, “are not well inhabited, but the visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17.” Had Dr. Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 or 16 instead?)

“That's right; put it on the citÉ,” muttered Grattan, who was fond of this part of Geneva, for he often dined there, and who admired the representatives of the South American states as hopeful agents of crime and mystery.

No evidence, it seemed, was forthcoming that any one had seen Dr. Chang in the citÉ, but then, as the delegate from Paraguay remarked, even the inhabitants of the citÉ must sleep sometimes.

Police and detectives had early been put to work to search the cathedral quarter. Systematically they were making inquiries in it, street by street, house by house. Systematically, too, others were making inquiries in the old St. Gervais quarter.

“But police detective work is never any good,” as Henry, a well-read person in some respects, remarked. “It is well known that one requires non-constabulary talent.”

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