This message bore the same address which Allerdyke had found in the telegram discovered in James’s pocket-book—­Waldorf Hotel—­and he determined to wire Mr. Franklin Fullaway immediately.  He sat down at a writing-table in the hall and drew a sheaf of telegraph forms towards him.  But it was not easy to compose the message which he wished to send.  He knew nothing of the man to whom he must address it, nothing of his business relations with James; he had no clear notion of what the present particular transaction was, nor how it might be connected with what had just happened.  After considerable thought he wrote out a telegram of some length, and carried it himself to the telegraph office in the station outside:—­

“To Franklin Fullaway, Waldorf Hotel, London.

“Your wire to James Allerdyke opened by undersigned, his cousin.  James Allerdyke died suddenly here during night.  Circumstances somewhat mysterious.  Investigation proceeding.  Have found on body your telegram to him of April 21.  Glad if you can explain business referred to therein, or give any other information about his recent doings abroad.

“From Marshall Allerdyke, Station Hotel, Hull.”

It was by that time eight o’clock, and the railway station and the hotel had started into the business of another day.  There were signs that people who had stayed in the hotel over-night were about to take their departure by early trains, and Allerdyke hastened back to the office to look over the register—­he was anxious to know who and what the folk were who had been near and about his cousin in his last hours.  But a mere glance at the big pages showed him the uselessness of his task.  There were some seventy or eighty entries, made during the previous twenty-four hours; it was impossible to go into the circumstances of each.  He turned with a look of despair to the manager at his elbow.

“Nothing much to be made out of that!” he muttered.  “Still—­which are the people who came off the Perisco last night?”

The manager summoned a clerk; the clerk indicated a sequence of entries, amongst which Allerdyke at once noticed the name of Dr. Lydenberg.  The rest were, of course, unfamiliar to him.

“There was a lady here last night, who, according to your night-porter, changed her mind about staying, and set off in a motor-car about midnight,” observed Allerdyke.  “Which is she, now, in this lot?”

The clerk instantly pointed to an entry, made in a big, dashing, artistic-looking handwriting.

“That,” he answered.  “Miss Celia Lennard—­Number 265.”

Two numbers away from James Allerdyke’s room—­Number 263!  The inquirer pricked his ears.

“It was she who went off in the middle of the night,” continued the clerk.  “She pestered me with a lot of questions as to how she could get North—­to Edinburgh.  That would be about eleven o’clock.  I told her she couldn’t get a train until morning.  I saw her going upstairs just before I went off duty—­soon after eleven.  It seems, according to the night-porter—­”