nerve
in any fresh direction in which a chance ray lit the path. But it would
be a difficult letter to write, and Langholm was still battling with the
first sentence when he reached the Cadogan.

"A gentleman to see me?" he cried in surprise. "What gentleman?"

"Wouldn't leave his name, sir; said he'd call again; a foreign
gentleman, he seemed to me."

"A delicate-looking man?"

"Very, sir. You seem to know him better than he knows you," added the
hall-porter, with whom Langholm had made friends. "He wasn't certain
whether it was the Mr. Langholm he wanted who was staying here, and he
asked to look at the register."

"Did you let him see it?" cried Langholm, quickly.

"I did, sir."

"Then let me have another look at it, please!"

It was as Langholm feared. Thoughtlessly, but naturally enough, when
requested to put his own name in the book, he had also filled in that
full address which he took such pains to conceal in places where he was
better known. And that miserable young Italian, that fellow Severino,
had discovered not only where he was staying in town, but where he lived
in the country, and his next discovery would be Normanthorpe House and
its new mistress! Langholm felt enraged; after his own promise to write
to Rachel, a promise already fulfilled, the unhappy youth might have had
the decency to refrain from underhand tricks like this. Langholm felt
inclined to take a cab at once to Severino's lodgings, there to relieve
his mind by a very plain expression of his opinion. But it was late; and
perhaps allowances should be made for a sick man with a passion as
hopeless as his bodily state; in any case he would sleep upon it first.

But there was no sleep for Charles Langholm that night, nor did the
thought of Severino enter his head again; it was suddenly swept aside
and as suddenly replaced by that of the man who was to fill the
novelist's mind for many a day.

Idly glancing up and down the autographed pages of the hotel register,
as his fingers half-mechanically turned leaf after leaf backward,
Langholm's eye had suddenly caught a name of late as familiar to him as
his own.

It was the name of John Buchanan Steel.

And the date was the date of the Minchin murder.

CHAPTER XXIII

DAWN

The hall-porter was only too ready for further chat. It was the dull
season, and this visitor was one of a variety always popular in the
quieter hotels; he was never above a pleasant word with the servant