previous night. He interviewed various hotel servants--waiters,
chambermaids, porters, all could tell him something, and the sum total of
what they could tell amounted, for all practical purposes, to next to
nothing. James Allerdyke had come to the hotel just as several other
people had come. He had been served with a light supper in the
coffee-room; he had been seen chatting with one or two people in the
lounge and in the smoking-room; a chambermaid had seen him in his own
room--according to all these people there was nothing in his appearance
or his behaviour that was out of the common, and all agreed that he
looked very well.

The manager, who accompanied Allerdyke in his round of these inquiries,
glanced at him with a puzzled expression when they came to an end.

"Of course, sir, if you would like the police to be summoned," he
suggested for the second time. "Perhaps--"

"No--not yet!" answered Allerdyke. "I daresay they'll have to be called
in; indeed, I suppose it's absolutely necessary, because of the inquest,
but I'll wait until I hear what these doctors have to say, and, besides
that, I want to get some news from London. It's a queer business
altogether, and if there has been any foul play, why"--he paused and
looked round at the people who were passing in and out of the hall, in a
corner of which he and the manager were standing--"we can't hold up all
these folk and ask 'em if they know anything, you know," he added, with a
grim smile.

"That's the devil of it! If there has, as I say, been aught
wrong--murder, to put it plainly--why, the criminal or criminals may
already be off or going off now, amongst these people, and I can't