enough for me I could go to the devil.  Of course I asked him where the money was coming from, and he said from a man he’d not heard of for years until that morning, but he didn’t say how he’d heard of him then, only that he must be a millionaire.  So then I asked why a man he hadn’t seen for so long should pay his debts, but Minchin only laughed and swore that he’d make him.  And that was the last I ever heard of it; he sat down at that desk over yonder and wrote to his millionaire there and then, and took it out himself to post.  It was the last time I saw him alive, for he said he wasn’t coming back till he got his answer, and it was the last letter he ever wrote in the place.”

“On that desk, eh?” Langholm glanced at the spare piece of office furniture in the corner.  “Didn’t he keep any papers here?” he added.

“He did, but you fellows impounded them.”

“Of course we did,” said Langholm, hastily.  “Then you have nothing of his left?”

“Only his pen, and a diary in which he hadn’t written a word.  I slipped them into a drawer with his papers, and there they are still.”

Langholm felt disappointed.  He had learnt so much, it was tantalizing not to learn a little more.  If he could only make sure of that millionaire friend of Minchin!  In his own mind he was all but sure, but his own mind was too elastic by half.

Crofts was drumming on the blotting-pad in front of him; all of a sudden Langholm noticed that it had a diary attached.

“Minchin’s diary wasn’t one like yours, was it?” he exclaimed.

“The same thing,” said Mr. Crofts.

“Then I should like to see it.”

“There’s not a word written in it; one of you chaps overhauled it at the time.”

“Never mind!”

“Well, then, it’s in the top long drawer of the desk he used to use—­if my clerk has not appropriated it to his own use.”

Langholm held his breath as he went to the drawer in question.  In another instant his breath escaped him in a sigh of thankfulness.  The “Universal Diary” (for the year before) was there, sure enough.  And it was attached to a pink blotter precisely similar to that upon which Mr. Crofts still drummed with idle fingers.

“Anything more I can show you?” inquired that worthy, humorously.

Langholm was gazing intently, not at the diary, but at the pink blotting-paper.  Suddenly he looked up.

“You say that was the last letter he ever wrote in your office?”

“The very last.”

“Then—­yes—­you can show me a looking-glass if you have one!”

Crofts had a small one on his chimney-piece.

“By the Lord Harry,” said he, handing it, “but you tip-top ’tecs are a leery lot!”

CHAPTER XXIV

ONE WHO WAS NOT BIDDEN