A couple of hours later he emerged from his house, resplendent in a silk hat and frock coat, with well-fitting gloves and a gold-headed cane. Taking another taxi, he drove to Knightsbridge. There he dismissed his vehicle, and approaching his man, Hilton, made him a slight sign. The other responded by nodding his head. Cosgrove, the Inspector understood, had gone out.
Sauntering leisurely across the road, Tanner mounted the steps of the house and rang. The door was opened by a dark, clean-shaven manservant.
“Mr. Ponson is not at home, sir,” he said in reply to the Inspector’s inquiry, as he reached back for a salver.
Tanner held out a card engraved “Mr. Reginald Willoughby, The Albany.”
“I rather wanted to see Mr. Ponson on business,” he went on. “Do you think he’ll soon be back?”
“I think so, sir. He’ll almost certainly be in before .”
The Inspector glanced at his watch.
“I have half an hour to spare. I think I’ll come in and wait.”
“Very good, sir,” the man replied, as he led the way to a large sitting-room on the first floor.
Left to himself, Tanner began by looking carefully round the room, and noting and memorising its contents. It was furnished as a library, with huge leather-covered chairs, and a large roll-top desk. The walls were lined with bookshelves, relieved here and there by a good print. The air was heavy with the scent of innumerable roses, arranged in bowls of silver and old china. Books and papers, mostly of a sporting character, were littered on chairs and occasional tables. Cosgrove Ponson, it was evident, was not hard up in the sense in which the words are understood by the man in the street.
Tanner waited motionless for a few minutes, then rising softly, he tiptoed over to the roll-top desk and tried the lid. It was locked. Slipping a small tool from his pocket, he gently inserted it in the lock, and after a few turns he was able to push the shutter noiselessly up.
The desk was littered with papers. Tanner sat down before it and began a systematic though rapid search. He wanted to find out for himself Cosgrove’s exact financial position as well as, if possible, the names of any lady friends, one of whom might have impersonated Mrs. Franklyn’s servant.
But he had no luck. It seemed likely Cosgrove must have some other desk or sanctum in which he kept his more private correspondence. There were here notes, invitations, bills, a few receipts, and other miscellaneous papers, but no bankbook nor anything to give a clue to his means. Nor were any of the letters from female correspondents couched in sufficiently familiar language to seem worthy of a second thought.
Considerably disappointed, Tanner pursued his search according to the regular routine he employed in such cases, ending up when he had finished with the letters by drawing a small mirror from his pocket and with it examining the blotting paper. He rapidly scanned the various sheets, and was just about to put them down as useless when his eye lit on the blurred and partial impression of an address. It consisted of three lines. The first he could not read, the second he thought was Gracechurch Street, following an undecipherable number, while the third was clear—the word “City.” He had not noticed this address on any of the papers, and he now remarked it only because it seemed to suggest finance. Thinking it might be worth while trying to decipher the name, he slipped the page out of the blotter and secreted it in his pocket. Then silently closing the desk he tiptoed to the door. After listening for a moment at the keyhole he opened it and stepped stealthily out.
Several doors opened off the passage, and Tanner stood for a moment wondering which led to the room of which he was in search. At last he selected one, and having ascertained from the keyhole that all was quiet within, he silently turned the handle. It opened into a dining-room. Withdrawing in the same noiseless manner he tried the next, to find himself in a spare bedroom. But the third door led to his goal. It was evidently Cosgrove’s dressing-room, and there at the opposite wall was what he was looking for—a long line of Cosgrove’s boots and shoes. A moment’s examination sufficed. Cosgrove’s foot was too big to have made the tracks of the fifth man at the Luce Manor boathouse. Silently he returned to his seat in the library.
He looked at his watch. His search had lasted thirty-five minutes. He rang the bell.
“I am sorry I cannot wait for Mr. Ponson,” he told the butler. “I shall write to him.”
That evening he sat down to reexamine the sheet of blotting paper. He studied the second line for several minutes, and at last came to the conclusion his first idea had been correct. It was apparently Gracechurch Street. But the number was quite beyond him.
Taking a street directory he began to go through the Gracechurch Street names, comparing each with the blot-sheet marks. He had been through about half when he came on one that seemed the correct shape—Messrs. Moses Erckstein & Co. And when he saw that Messrs. Erckstein were moneylenders, he felt hopeful that he was on the right track. But he was very thorough. He worked through the whole list, lest there should be some other name even more like that on the sheet. But there was none.
Next morning he called on Messrs. Erckstein. He was again wearing his silk hat and frock coat, and with these clothes he put on, to some extent at least, the manners of what our friends across the pond call a club man.
