“Where is that?” asked Spargo.

“Waterloo district,” answered Rathbury.  “A small house, I believe.  Well, I’m going there.  Are you coming?”

“Yes,” replied Spargo.  “Of course.  And Mr. Breton wants to come, too.”

“If I’m not in the way,” said Breton.

Rathbury laughed.

“Well, we may find out something about this scrap of paper,” he observed.  And he waved a signal to the nearest taxi-cab driver.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ANGLO-ORIENT HOTEL

The house at which Spargo and his companions presently drew up was an old-fashioned place in the immediate vicinity of Waterloo Railway Station—­a plain-fronted, four-square erection, essentially mid-Victorian in appearance, and suggestive, somehow, of the very early days of railway travelling.  Anything more in contrast with the modern ideas of a hotel it would have been difficult to find in London, and Ronald Breton said so as he and the others crossed the pavement.

“And yet a good many people used to favour this place on their way to and from Southampton in the old days,” remarked Rathbury.  “And I daresay that old travellers, coming back from the East after a good many years’ absence, still rush in here.  You see, it’s close to the station, and travellers have a knack of walking into the nearest place when they’ve a few thousand miles of steamboat and railway train behind them.  Look there, now!” They had crossed the threshold as the detective spoke, and as they entered a square, heavily-furnished hall, he made a sidelong motion of his head towards a bar on the left, wherein stood or lounged a number of men who from their general appearance, their slouched hats, and their bronzed faces appeared to be Colonials, or at any rate to have spent a good part of their time beneath Oriental skies.  There was a murmur of tongues that had a Colonial accent in it; an aroma of tobacco that suggested Sumatra and Trichinopoly, and Rathbury wagged his head sagely.  “Lay you anything the dead man was a Colonial, Mr. Spargo,” he remarked.  “Well, now, I suppose that’s the landlord and landlady.”

There was an office facing them, at the rear of the hall, and a man and woman were regarding them from a box window which opened above a ledge on which lay a register book.  They were middle-aged folk:  the man, a fleshy, round-faced, somewhat pompous-looking individual, who might at some time have been a butler; the woman a tall, spare-figured, thin-featured, sharp-eyed person, who examined the newcomers with an enquiring gaze.  Rathbury went up to them with easy confidence.

“You the landlord of this house, sir?” he asked.  “Mr. Walters?  Just so—­and Mrs. Walters, I presume?”

The landlord made a stiff bow and looked sharply at his questioner.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he enquired.

“A little matter of business, Mr. Walters,” replied Rathbury, pulling out a card.  “You’ll see there who I am—­Detective-Sergeant Rathbury, of the Yard.  This is Mr. Frank Spargo, a newspaper man; this is Mr. Ronald Breton, a barrister.”