t till the end of the year at
least! If I can't strike the trail by then--"

He lapsed into dear reminiscence and dearer daydreams, their common
scene some two hundred miles north; but to realize his lapse was to
recover from it promptly. Langholm glanced at himself in the little
mirror. His was an honest face, and it was an honest part that he must
play, or none at all. He leaned over the apron and interested himself in
the London life that was so familiar to him still. It was as though he
had not been absent above a day, yet his perceptions were sharpened by
his very absence of so many weeks. The wood pavement gave off a strong
but not unpleasant scent in the heavy August heat; it was positively
dear to the old Londoner's nostrils. The further he drove upon his
southwesterly course, the emptier were the well-known thoroughfares. St.
James's Street might have been closed to traffic; the clubs in Pall
Mall were mostly shut. On the footways strolled the folk whom one only
sees there in August and September, the entire families from the
country, the less affluent American, guide book in hand. Here and there
was a perennial type, the pale actor with soft hat and blue-black chin,
the ragged sloucher from park to park. Langholm could have foregathered
with one and all, such was the strange fascination of the town for one
who was twice the man among his northern roses. But that is the kind of
mistress that London is to those who have once felt her spell; you may
forget her by the year, but the spell lies lurking in the first whiff of
the wood pavement, the first flutter of the evening paper on the curb;
and even in the cab you wonder how you have borne existence elsewhere.

The hotel was very empty, and Langholm found not only the best of rooms
at his disposal, but that flattering quality of attention which awaits
the first comer when few come at all. He refreshed himself with tea and
a bath, and then set out to reconnoitre the scene of the already
half-forgotten murder. He had a vague though sanguine notion that his
imaginative intuition might at once perceive some possibility which had
never dawned upon the academic intelligence of the police.

Of course he remembered the name of the street, and it was easily
found. Nor had Langholm any difficulty in discovering the house, though
he had forgotten the number. There were very few houses in the street,
and only one of them was empty and to let. It was plastered with the
bill