Idly glancing up and down the autographed pages of the hotel register, as his fingers half-mechanically turned leaf after leaf backward, Langholm’s eye had suddenly caught a name of late as familiar to him as his own.

It was the name of John Buchanan Steel.

And the date was the date of the Minchin murder.

CHAPTER XXIII

DAWN

The hall-porter was only too ready for further chat.  It was the dull season, and this visitor was one of a variety always popular in the quieter hotels; he was never above a pleasant word with the servants.  Yet the porter stared at Langholm as he approached.  His face was flushed, and his eyes so bright that there would have been but one diagnosis by the average observer.  But the porter knew that Langholm had come in sober, and that for the last twenty minutes he had sat absorbed in the hotel register.

“I see,” said Langholm—­and even his voice was altered, which made the other stare the harder—­“I see that a friend of mine stayed here just upon a year ago.  I wonder if you remember him?”

“If it was the off-season, sir, I dare say I shall.”

“It was in September, and his name was Steel.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Only one night, I gather—­an elderly gentleman with very white hair.”

The porter’s face lighted up.

“I remember him, sir!  I should think I did!  A very rich gentleman, I should say; yes, he only stayed the one night, but he gave me a sovereign when he went away next day.”

“He is very rich,” said Langholm, repressing by main force a desire to ask a string of questions.  He fancied that the porter was not one who needed questioning, and his patience had its immediate reward.

“I remember when he arrived,” the man went on.  “It was late at night, and he hadn’t ordered his room.  He came in first to see whether we could give him one.  I paid the cab myself and brought in his bag.”

“He had just arrived from the country, I presume?”

The porter nodded.

“At King’s Cross, by the 10.45, I believe; but it must have been a good bit late, for I was just coming off duty, and the night-porter was just coming on.”

“Then you didn’t see any more of Mr. Steel that night?”

“I saw him go out again,” said the porter, dryly, “after he had something to eat, for we are short-handed in the off-season, and I stopped up myself to see he got it.  I didn’t see him come in the second time.”

Langholm could hardly believe his ears.  To cover his excitement he burst out laughing.

“The old dog!” he cried.  “Do you know if he ever came in at all?”

“Between two and three, I believe,” said the porter in the same tone.

Langholm laughed again, but asked no more questions, and in a little he was pacing his bedroom floor, with fevered face and tremulous stride, as he was to continue pacing it for the greater part of that August night.