But the reader’s face shone with a brighter light at each fresh failure.  Why had the name he wanted never come up in open court?  Where was the evidence of the man who had made all the mischief between the Minchins?  Langholm intended having first the one and then the other; already he was on the spring to a first conclusion.  With a caution, however, which did infinite credit to one of his temperament, the amateur detective determined to look a little further before leaping even in his own mind.

Early in the afternoon he was back in Chelsea, making fraudulent representations to the house-agent near the Vestry Hall.

“Not more than ninety,” repeated that gentleman, as he went through his book, and read out particulars of several houses at about that rental; but the house which Langholm burned to see over was not among the number.

“I want a quiet street,” said the wily writer, and named the one in which it stood.  “Have you nothing there?”

“I have one,” said the agent with reserve, “and it’s only seventy.”

“The less the better,” cried Langholm, light-heartedly.  “I should like to see that one.”

The house-agent hesitated, finally looking Langholm in the face.

“You may as well know first as last,” said he, “for we have had enough trouble about that house.  It was let last year for ninety; we’re asking seventy because it is the house in which Mr. Minchin was shot dead.  Still want to see it?” inquired the house-agent, with a wry smile.

It was all Langholm could do to conceal his eagerness, but in the end he escaped with several orders to view, and the keys of the house of houses in his pocket.  No caretaker could be got to live in it; the agent seemed half-surprised at Langholm’s readiness to see over it all alone.

About an hour later the novelist stood at a door whose name and number were not inscribed upon any of the orders obtained by fraud from the King’s Road agent.  It was a door that needed painting, and there was a conspicuous card in the ground-floor window.  Langholm tugged twice in his impatience at the old-fashioned bell.  If his face had been alight before, it was now on fire, for by deliberate steps he had arrived at the very conclusion to which he had been inclined to jump.  At last came a slut of the imperishable lodging-house type.

“Is your mistress in?”

“No.”

“When do you expect her?”

“Not before night.”

“Any idea what time of night?”

The untidy child had none, but at length admitted that she had orders to keep the fire in for the landlady’s supper.  Langholm drew his own deduction.  It would be little use in returning before nine o’clock.  Five hours to wait!  He made one more cast before he went.

“Have you been here long, my girl?”

“Going on three months.”

“But your mistress has been here some years?”

“I believe so.”