Langholm could safely say that he was not.

“Then dine with me at the Rag at seven, and tell me how you get on.  It must be seven, because I’m off to Scotland by the night mail.  And I don’t want to be discouraging, my dear fellow, but it is only honest to say that I think more of your chivalry than of your chances of success!”

At the Black Museum they had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them.  They were Mrs. Minchin’s property, and if they knew where she was they would of course restore everything.

“But the papers say she isn’t Mrs. Minchin any longer,” the officer added.  “Well, well!  There’s no accounting for taste.”

“But Mrs. Minchin was acquitted,” remarked Langholm, in tone as impersonal as he could make it.

“Ye-es,” drawled his guide, dryly.  “Well, it’s not for us to say anything about that.”

“But you think all the more, I suppose?”

“There’s only one opinion about it in the Yard.”

“But surely you haven’t given up trying to find out who really did murder Mr. Minchin?”

“We think we did find out, sir,” was the reply to that.

So they had given it up!  For a single second the thought was stimulating; if the humble author could succeed where the police had failed!  But the odds against such success were probably a million to one, and Langholm sighed as he handled the weapon with which the crime had been committed, in the opinion of the police.

“What makes you so certain that this was the revolver?” he inquired, more to satisfy his conscience by leaving no question unasked than to voice any doubt upon the point.

The other smiled as he explained the peculiarity of the pistol; it had been made in Melbourne, and it carried the bullet of peculiar size which had been extracted from Alexander Minchin’s body.

“But London is full of old Australians,” objected Langholm, for objection’s sake.

“Well, sir,” laughed the officer, “you find one 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.  Only don’t forget the motive; it wasn’t robbery, you know, though her ladyship was so sure it was robbers!  There’s the maker’s name on the barrel.  I should take a note of it, sir, if I was you!”

That name and that note were all that Langholm had to show when he dined with the criminologist at his service club the same evening.  The amateur detective looked a beaten man already, but he talked through his teeth of inspecting the revolvers in every pawnbroker’s shop in London.

“It will take you a year,” said the old soldier, cheerfully.

“It seems the only chance,” replied the despondent novelist.  “It is a case of doing that or nothing.”