“It was bad,” said Mr. Crofts, promptly; “about as bad as it could be.  He had one lucky flutter, and it would have been the ruin of him if he had lived.  He backed his luck for more than it was worth, and his luck deserted him on the spot.  Yes, poor old devil!” sighed the sympathetic Crofts:  “he thought he was going to make his pile out of hand, but in another week he would have been a bankrupt.”

“Had you known him long, Mr. Crofts?”

“Not six months; it was down at Brighton we met, quite by chance, and got on talking about Westralians.  It was I put him on to his one good spec.  His wife was with him at the time—­couldn’t stand the woman!  She was much too good for me and my missus, to say nothing of her own husband.  I remember one night on the pier—­”

“I won’t trouble you about Brighton, Mr. Crofts,” Langholm interrupted, as politely as he could.  “Mr. Minchin was not afterwards a partner of yours, was he?”

“Never; though I won’t say he mightn’t have been if things had panned out differently, and he had gone back to Westralia with some capital.  Meanwhile he had the run of my office, and that was all.”

“And not even the benefit of your advice?”

“He wouldn’t take it, once he was bitten with the game.”

Thus far Langholm had simply satisfied his own curiosity upon one or two points concerning a dead man who had been little more than a name to him hitherto.  His one discovery of the least potential value was that Minchin had evidently died in difficulties.  He now consulted some notes jotted down on an envelope upon his way to the City.

“Mr. Minchin, as you are aware,” resumed Langholm, “was, like his wife, an Australian by birth.  Had he many Australian friends here in London?”

“None at all,” replied Mr. Crofts, “that I am aware of.”

“Nor anywhere else in the country, think you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Not in the north of England, for example?”

Thus led, Mr. Crofts frowned at his desk until an enlightened look broke over his florid face.

“By Jove, yes!” said he.  “Now you speak of it, there was somebody up north—­a rich man, too—­but he only heard of him by chance a day or so before his death.”

“A rich man, you say, and an Australian?”

“I don’t know about that, but it was out there they had known each other, and Minchin had no idea he was in England till he saw it in the paper a day or two before his death.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“No, I don’t, for he never told it to me; fact is, we were not on the best of terms just at the last,” explained Mr. Crofts.  “Money matters—­money matters—­they divide the best of friends—­and to tell you the truth he owed me more than I could afford to lose.  But the day before the last day of his life he came in and said it was all right, he’d square up before the week was out, and if that wasn’t good