“Are you her only servant?”

“Yes.”

And five hours to wait for more!

It seemed an infinity to Langholm as he turned away.  But at all events the house had not changed hands.  The woman he would eventually see was the woman who had given invaluable evidence at the Old Bailey.

CHAPTER XXI

WORSE SPEED

Langholm returned to his hotel and wrote a few lines to Rachel.  It had been arranged that he was to report progress direct to her, and as often as possible; but it was a very open arrangement, in which Steel had sardonically concurred.  Yet, little as there was to say, and for all his practice with the pen, it took Langholm the best part of an hour to write that he believed he had already obtained a most important clew, which the police had missed in the most incredible manner, though it had been under their noses all the time.  So incredible did it appear, however, even to himself, when written down, that Langholm decided not to post this letter until after his interview with the Chelsea landlady.

To kill the interval, he went for his dinner to the single club to which he still belonged.  It was a Bohemian establishment off the Strand, and its time-honored name was the best thing about it in this member’s eyes.  He was soon cursing himself for coming near the place while engaged upon his great and sacred quest.  Not a “clubable” person himself, as that epithet was understood in this its home, Langholm was not a little surprised when half-a-dozen men (most of whom he barely knew) rose to greet him on his appearance in the smoking-room.  But even with their greetings came the explanation, to fill the newcomer with a horror too sudden for concealment.

It appeared that Mrs. Steel’s identity with the whilom Mrs. Minchin had not only leaked out in Delverton.  Langholm gathered that it was actually in one of that morning’s half-penny papers, at which he had not found time to glance in his hot-foot ardor for the chase.  For the moment he was shocked beyond words, and not a little disgusted, to discover the cause of his own temporary importance.

“Talk of the devil!” cried a comparative crony.  “I was just telling them that you must be the ‘well-known novelist’ in the case, as your cottage was somewhere down there.  Have you really seen anything of the lady?”

“Seen anything of her?” echoed a journalist to whom Langholm had never spoken in his life.  “Why, can’t you see that he bowled her out himself and came up straight to sell the news?”

Langholm took his comparative crony by the arm.

“Come in and dine with me,” he said; “I can’t stand this!  Yes, yes, I know her well,” he whispered, as they went round the screen which was the only partition between pipes and plates; “but let me see what that scurrilous rag has to say while you order.  I’ll do the rest, and you had better make it a bottle of champagne.”