holm, hastily. "Then you have nothing of
his left?"

"Only his pen, and a diary in which he hadn't written a word. I slipped
them into a drawer with his papers, and there they are still."

Langholm felt disappointed. He had learnt so much, it was tantalizing
not to learn a little more. If he could only make sure of that
millionaire friend of Minchin! In his own mind he was all but sure, but
his own mind was too elastic by half.

Crofts was drumming on the blotting-pad in front of him; all of a sudden
Langholm noticed that it had a diary attached.

"Minchin's diary wasn't one like yours, was it?" he exclaimed.

"The same thing," said Mr. Crofts.

"Then I should like to see it."

"There's not a word written in it; one of you chaps overhauled it at the
time."

"Never mind!"

"Well, then, it's in the top long drawer of the desk he used to use--if
my clerk has not appropriated it to his own use."

Langholm held his breath as he went to the drawer in question. In
another instant his breath escaped him in a sigh of thankfulness. The
"Universal Diary" (for the year before) was there, sure enough. And it
was attached to a pink blotter precisely similar to that upon which Mr.
Crofts still drummed with idle fingers.

"Anything more I can show you?" inquired that worthy, humorously.

Langholm was gazing intently, not at the diary, but at the pink
blotting-paper. Suddenly he looked up.

"You say that was the last letter he ever wrote in your office?"

"The very last."

"Then--yes--you can show me a looking-glass if you have one!"

Crofts had a small one on his chimney-piece.

"By the Lord Harry," said he, handing it, "but you tip-top 'tecs are a
leery lot!"

CHAPTER XXIV

ONE WHO WAS NOT BIDDEN

Langholm went north next morning by the ten o'clock express from King's
Cross. He had been but four nights in town, and not four days, yet to
Langholm they might have been weeks, for he had never felt so much and
slept so little in all his life. He had also done a good deal; but it is
the moments of keen sensation that make up the really crowded hours, and
Langholm was to run the gamut of his emotions before this memorable week
was out. In psychological experience it was to be, for him, a little
lifetime in itself; indeed, the week seemed that already, while it was
still young, and comparatively poor in incident and surprise.

He had bought magazines and the literary papers for his journey, but he
could co