IT was now half-past one. He knew that the Chief would be at luncheon, so he determined to have luncheon himself before returning to the Yard.

He turned into Blanchard’s in Beak Street.

During the meal he did not think once of the case.

He knew the advantage of allowing a problem to cool itself, and he had the power of detaching his mind from any business on hand and attaching it to another affair; especially when the other affair was of an edible nature.

He was a frank gourmet. When he had finished he lit a poisonous-looking green cigar and strolled down Regent Street towards his destination.

He was thinking now about the case; reviewing it, gazing at it with his mind’s eye as a Jew gazes at a lustrous jewel.

The thing was as full of fire and cloud and mystery as an opal. He felt that, live as long as he might, he would never again find himself face to face with a case so full of strange possibilities.

It was just now, walking down the crowded street, digesting his luncheon and smoking his cigar, it was just now, that he felt in himself that strange sixth sense stirring which so few men possess. The sense that allows us to see without eyes, hear without ears and feel without hands. The sense which allows us to say to a man whom we have not seen for years, and whom we meet at a street corner: “It is strange, I was thinking of you to-day, and, somehow, I expected to meet you.”

Freyberger, just now, was beginning to feel that, somewhere, lost in the darkness of the world, there existed a mind antagonistic to his own, an appalling mind, a mind of giant stature and dwarf-like subtlety and crookedness.

He had not yet come to grips with it, but he felt it to be there, as one man feels the presence of another in a darkened room. When he arrived at the Yard, he found a new development. A cabman had been found who had driven Sir Anthony Gyde on the night before. The Chief was still absent, so Freyberger took it upon himself to interrogate the man.

He had picked Sir Anthony up in Piccadilly at twelve-thirty on the night before and driven him to Howland Street. Was he sure it was Sir Anthony? Certain. He had driven him before. Nearly every cabman, accustomed to the West End, knew him.

His cab had been coming along slowly by the kerb when he saw Sir Anthony come out of No. 110B. The baronet walked a few paces, stopped, looked around, saw the cab and hailed it.

He ordered himself to be driven to Howland Street, gave no number, stopped the cab towards the middle of the street and paid his fare with a five-shilling piece, asking for no change.

He then walked down the street, and, opening a house door with a latchkey, entered and closed the door behind him.

“Could you identify the house again?” asked Freyberger.

The man believed he could. It was a dingy house beside one that had been new painted.

“How was Sir Anthony dressed?” asked the detective.

“All in dark clothes, wearing a tall hat and carrying a black bag in his hand.”

“That will do,” replied Freyberger. “Is your cab outside?”

“It is, sir.”

“Come on then, you can take me to Howland Street, and if you can identify the house I will give you something over your fare.”

The cabman followed the detective to the street, where his cab was waiting.

Freyberger got in, the man got on the box, and they drove off.

That a millionaire of Gyde’s somewhat dubious moral character should have a second house in London, the address of which was not printed on his visiting cards, was not at all an out-of-the-way fact. Yet one might have thought he would have chosen a more cheerful neighbourhood than Howland Street.

About the middle of the thoroughfare the cab drew up.

“That is the place, sir,” said the man, pointing to a gaunt, grimy-looking house standing by one that had been new painted. “That is the house, if I’m not very much mistaken.”

“Wait for me,” said Freyberger. He knocked at the door.

The door, the knocker, the bell-pulls, all were in the last stage of neglect, an old rug hung over the area railings and a milk can stood on the step.

The door opened after he had knocked several times and rung twice.

“Are you the landlady?” asked Freyberger of the unwashed and wilted-looking woman who obeyed the summons.

“I am.”

“May I come in and speak to you for a moment?”

“No, you don’t,” said the woman. “If you’re after Mr Tidmus he’s gone away, and won’t be back, goodness knows when. What’s your business?”

“I’m after no one especially. I wish to ask you a question which you will be pleased to answer me, for I am a detective from Scotland Yard, Inspector Freyberger. A gentleman called here last night some time between half-past twelve and one; he let himself in with a latchkey. He was a bearded man, wearing a tall hat and carrying a bag. What do you know about him?”

“Well, to be sure,” said the woman, in an interested voice. “And what’s he been doing?”

“I think we had better come in and I will explain things, thank you—” She let him enter, closed the door and led him into a dingy parlour. “What he has been doing is neither here nor there. I want to know about him. Does he live here?”

“No,” replied the landlady. “If he’s the man you mean he came here with a letter from Mr Kolbecker asking me to let him use Mr Kolbecker’s room for the night.”

“Ah!”

“Somewhere about ten to one it was. I’d been sitting up waiting for Mr Giles. He plays the trombone at the Gaiety and mostly comes home late and not to be trusted with candles.

“I hears a latchkey fumbling and I comes into the passage, and there was a gentleman such as you name.

“He said, ‘Mrs Stevens?’ and I says, ‘That’s my name, and who are you?’ He says, ‘Mr Kolbecker has lent me his latchkey and allows me the use of his room to-night.’ I says, ‘Oh!’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘and here’s a letter from him.’ He hands me a letter; it was from Mr Kolbecker, and it said to let the bearer use his room for the night as he was a friend. ‘All right,’ I says, ‘the sheets are aired; and what might your name be?’ He laughed when I said that, leastways, it wasn’t so much a laugh, it was more liker the noise a hen makes clucking, only not so loud. ‘Anthony,’ he says. ‘Anthony what?’ I asks him. ‘Mr John Anthony, that’s my name,’ he answers me, and I shows him up. He went at eight this morning and give the servant girl a shilling.”

“Have you the letter he brought?”

“No; he kept it.”

“How long has Mr Kolbecker been here?”

“Some six months, off and on, but for the last six weeks he has been up in Cumberland.”

“Ah!” said Freyberger, “in Cumberland! What is he, this Mr Kolbecker?”

“He’s an artist.”

“An artist?”

“Oh, he’s all right. He pays his way regular. Keeps on his room and sends me the money for it every fortnit regular.”

“Have you any of his letters?”

“I b’lieve I’ve got the last.” She went to a drawer and hunted amidst some odds and ends.

“Here it is; no, ’tis only the envelope.”

“Give me the envelope,” said Freyberger. It was a narrow, shabby-looking envelope, addressed in a curious-looking handwriting. It was post-marked “Skirwith,” “Carlisle” and “London, W.C.”

“This is Mr Kolbecker’s handwriting?” asked the detective.

“It is.”

“I must keep this envelope, please.”

“No, you don’t,” replied the landlady, suddenly waxing wroth. “Here, you gimme that envelope back; you comes in and asks me questions which I answer about my lodgers. You say you’re from Scotland Yard. How’m I to know? Gimme that back.”

............