Hot Scent

'Come in!' called Trent.

Mr Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early
evening of the day on which the coroner's jury, without leaving the box,
had pronounced the expected denunciation of a person or persons unknown.
Trent, with a hasty glance upward, continued his intent study of what
lay in a photographic dish of enamelled metal, which he moved slowly
about in the light of the window. He looked very pale, and his movements
were nervous.

'Sit on the sofa,' he advised. 'The chairs are a job lot bought at the
sale after the suppression of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. This is a
pretty good negative,' he went on, holding it up to the light with his
head at the angle of discriminating judgement. 'Washed enough now, I
think. Let us leave it to dry, and get rid of all this mess.'

Mr Cupples, as the other busily cleared the table of a confusion of
basins, dishes, racks, boxes, and bottles, picked up first one and then
another of the objects and studied them with innocent curiosity.

'That is called hypo-eliminator,' said Trent, as Mr Cupples uncorked and
smelt at one of the bottles. 'Very useful when you're in a hurry with
a negative. I shouldn't drink it, though, all the same. It eliminates
sodium hypophosphite, but I shouldn't wonder if it would eliminate human
beings too.' He found a place for the last of the litter on the crowded
mantel-shelf, and came to sit before Mr Cupples on the table. 'The great
thing about a hotel sitting-room is that its beauty does not distract
the mind from work. It is no place for the mayfly pleasures of a mind at
ease. Have you ever been in this room before, Cupples? I have, hundreds
of times. It has pursued me all over England for years. I should feel
lost without it if, in some fantastic, far-off hotel, they were to give
me some other sitting-room. Look at this table-cover; there is the ink
I spilt on it when I had this room in Halifax. I burnt that hole in the
carpet when I had it in Ipswich. But I see they have mended the glass
over the picture of "Silent Sympathy", which I threw a boot at in
Banbury. I do all my best work here. This afternoon, for instance, since
the inquest, I have finished several excellent negatives. There is a
very good dark room downstairs.'

'The inquest--that reminds me,' said Mr Cupples, who knew that this sort
of talk in Trent meant the excitement of action, and was wondering what
he could be about. 'I came in to thank y