The Ponson Case

hours on the previous evening⁠—Tanner recollected that after dinner at Luce Manor on the Sunday the men had not joined the ladies in the drawing-room⁠—and here, the very next day, an interview of three hours had been necessary. Or say two hours, excluding lunch. A lot of business could be put through in two hours. Tanner began to fear the whole affair was deeper and more complicated than he had at first supposed.

He questioned all of the staff who had come in contact with the three men, without result, until he came to the restaurant porter who had called the taxi. Here he had more luck than is usual in such inquiries. The taxi had been taken from a neighbouring rank, and the porter recollected the driver, whom he had called several times previously. He was an elderly, wizened man, clean-shaven and with white hair.

After slipping a coin into the porter’s eager hand, Tanner walked to the rank. The driver of the third car answered the description. Tanner accosted him civilly, explaining who he was.

“On Monday the 5th instant, just three weeks ago,” he went on, “about three in the afternoon, you were hailed by the porter at the Étoile over there. Your fare was this gentleman”⁠—he showed Sir William’s photograph. “Do you remember it?”

The man looked at the card.

“Why yes, sir, I remembers ’im all right.”

“Where did you drive him to?”

“I’m blessed if I can remember the name, sir,” the driver answered slowly, “It was to a little narrow street back of Gower Street. I ’adn’t ever been there before. The old gent, ’e directs me there, and tells me to set ’im down at the corner, and so I does. ’E was standing there when I saw ’im last.”

“Could you find the place again?”

“I believe I could, sir.”

“Then drive me there,” said Tanner, entering the vehicle.

The district they reached was a miserable, decaying part of town. The streets were narrow⁠—mere lanes, and the buildings high and unusually drab and grimy even for a London backwater. The houses had been good at one time, but the place had now degenerated into a slum. “What in the name of wonder,” thought Tanner, as he stood looking round at the depressing prospect, “could have brought Sir William here?”

He paid off his driver and began to investigate his surroundings. He was at a crossroads, the broader street being labelled Dunlop Street, the other Pate’s Lane. In Dunlop Street were a few shops⁠—a bar at the corner, a tobacconist’s, a grocer’s⁠—all small, mean, and dirty. Pate’s Lane appeared entirely given up to tenement houses.

Tanner felt utterly at a loss. He could form no conception of Sir William’s possible objective. Nor could he envisage any line of inquiry which might lead him to his goal. He seemed to be up against a blank wall, through which he could see no means of penetrating.

He wondered if a former servant or mill worker might not live in the neighbourhood, with whom the manufacturer might have had business. But if so, and if by some incredible chance Tanner were to hit on the person in question, he felt he would be no further on, and that all knowledge of Sir William’s visit would almost certainly be concealed.

However, he would learn nothing by standing in the street, and he walked to the bar at the nearest corner and entered.

The landlord was a big, red-faced man with a bluff manner. Tanner, after ordering some ale, engaged him in conversation, deftly pumping him. But he learned nothing. The man had not seen Sir William, nor did the manufacturer’s name convey anything to him.

Tanner tried each of the other three corner shops of the crossroads, but again without result. Then, thinking that small tobacconists and newsagents sometimes act as mediums between persons who do not wish their connection to be known, he called at all the shops of these kinds in the immediate neighbourhood. Again he was disappointed, as he was also when he visited the pawnbroker’s. By this time it was getting late, and he turned his steps homeward, intending to return on the next morning and begin a house-to-house visitation in the vicinity of the cross streets.

As he walked down the road towards Gower Street, he noticed three buildings which he thought looked more the kind of place for a rendezvous than any he had yet seen. Two were shabby and rather squalid looking restaurants, the third a building slightly larger and more pretentious than its neighbours. In faded letters it bore the legend “Judd’s Family & Commercial Hotel.” Tanner decided that, before beginning on the houses of Pate’s Lane, he would try these three.

Next morning he drew blank in the first of the restaurants. A visit to the second was equally fruitless. But when he reached the hotel he had a stroke of luck.

A rather untidy porter was polishing the brass bell-push, and Tanner engaged him in conversation. Yes, he remembered a well-dressed old gentleman calling about half-past three on that Monday, three weeks earlier. He would recognise him if he saw him. Yes, he was sure that was his photograph. The gentleman had asked was a Mr. Douglas staying in the hotel, and on being answered in the affirmative he had gone up to the latter’s bedroom and remained with him for about half an hour. Then he had left, and that was all the porter knew.

“And what sort of a man was Mr. Douglas?” Tanner asked.

“A small man, very small and thin,” the porter returned. “Looked as ’ow a breath of wind would ’ave blown ’im away. Sort of scared too, I thought.”

Tanner pricked up his ears.

“What was he like in face?” he asked.

“ ’E was getting on in years⁠—maybe sixty or more, and ’e ’ad a small, grey goatee beard, and a moustache, and wore spectacles. ’E spoke like an American man and was a bit free with ’is langwidge, damning and cursing about everything.”

At last! Was this the man for