did, but you fellows impounded them."
"Of course we did," said Langholm, 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 concentrate his mind on nothing, and only the exigencies of railway travelling kept him off his legs. Luckily for Langholm, however, sleep came to him when least expected, in his cool corner of the corridor train, and he only awoke in time for luncheon before the change at York. His tired brain was vastly refreshed, but so far he could not concentrate it, even on the events of these eventful days. He was still in the thick of them. A sense of proportion was as yet impossible, and a consecutive review the most difficult of intellectual feats. Langholm was too excited, and the situation too identical with suspense, for a clear sight of all its bearings and potentialities; and then there was the stern self-discipline, the determined bridling of the imagination, in which he had not yet relaxed. Once in the night, however, in the hopeless hours between darkness and broad day, he had seen clearly for a while, and there and then pinned his vision down to paper. It concerned only one aspect of the case, but this was how Langholm found that he had stated it, on taking out his pocket-book during the final stages of his journey—
PROVISIONAL CASE AGAINST —— —— ——
1. Was in Sloane Street on the night of the murder, at an hotel about a mile from the house in which the murder was committed. This can be proved.
2. Left hotel shortly after arrival towards midnight, believed to have returned between two and three, and would thus have been absent at very time at which crime was committed according to medical evidence adduced at trial. But exact duration of absence from hotel can he proved.
3. Knew M. in Australia, but was in England unknown to M. till two mornings before murder, when M. wrote letter on receipt of which —— —— —— came up to town (arriving near scene of murder as above stated, about time of commission). All this morally certain and probably capable of legal proof.
4. "So then I asked why a man he hadn't seen for so long should pay his debts; but M. only laughed and swore, and said he'd make him." C. could be subpoenaed to confirm if not to amplify this statement to me, with others to effect that it was for money M. admitted having written to "a millionaire."
5. Attended Mrs. M.'s trial throughout, thereafter making her acquaintance and offering marriage without any previous private knowledge whatsoever of her character or antecedents.
POSSIBLE MOTIVES
—— —— —— is a human mystery, his past life a greater one. He elaborately pretends that no part of that past was spent in Australia.
M. said he knew him there; also that "he'd make him"—pay up!
Blackmail not inconsistent with M.'s character.
Men have died as they deserved before to-day for threatening blackmail.
Possible Motive for Marriage
Atonement of the Guilty to the Innocent.
As Langholm read and re-read these precise pronouncements, with something of the detachment and the mild surprise with which he occasionally dipped into his own earlier volumes, he congratulated himself upon the evidently lucid interval which had produced so much order from the chaos that had been his mind. Chaotic as its condition still was, that orderly array of impression, discovery, and surmise, bore the test of conscientious reconsideration. And there was nothing that Langholm felt moved to strike out in the train; but, on the other hand, he saw the weakness of his case as it stood at present, and was helped to see it by the detective officer's remark to him at Scotland Yard: "You find one [old Australian] who carries a revolver like this, and prove that he was in Chelsea on the night of the murder, with a motive for committing it, and we shall be glad of his name and address." Langholm had found the old Australian who could be proved to have been in Chelsea, or thereabouts, on the night in question; but the pistol he could not hope to find, and the motive was mere surmise.
And yet, to the walls of the mind that he was trying so hard to cleanse from prejudice and prepossession—to school indeed to an inhuman fairness—there clung small circumstances and smaller details which could influence no one else, which would not constitute evidence before any tribunal, but which weighed more with Langholm himself than all the points arrayed in his note-book with so much primness and precision.
There was Rachel's vain appeal to her husband, "Find out who is
