The little party traversed a corridor, at the further end of which Harvey Grimm threw open a door, leading through a small entrance-hall into an octagonal sitting-room, having a pleasant outlook on the Thames. A man was standing with his back towards them, gazing out of the window. He turned around at their entrance. "Ah, our friend Ditchwater!" Brodie murmured. "You know Inspector Ditchwater, don't you, Grimm?" "I know him, certainly," Harvey Grimm replied, frowning, "but I can't imagine what the mischief he is doing in my rooms?" "Perhaps I ought to have explained," the detective said apologetically. "We have taken the liberty, Grimm, of making a few slight investigations in your apartments." "The devil you have!" their tenant exclaimed, gazing through the half-open door into the inner room. "Is that the reason why my bedroom seems all upside down?" "Probably," the detective admitted--"quite probably. You see," he continued, "you are, in your way, my friend, an exceedingly interesting person to the police in this country, as you were at one time, I believe, to the police of New York. When a little affair such as we've been talking about happens only, as it were, a few yards away from your rooms, why, naturally, we've some interest in your doings." "Have you anything against me?" Harvey Grimm asked quietly. "A few questions," the other murmured. "See here, Grimm," he went on, with a sudden change of tone, "you've been absent from town for exactly nine days, until yesterday morning. Just where have you spent those nine days?" Harvey Grimm moved to the sideboard and helped himself to a cigarette from an open box. "Well," he observed, "I'm hanged if I can see that that's anybody's business except my own." "I will admit, sir," Brodie proceeded, "that there is, at the present moment, not the slightest necessity why you should answer that question--it is, in fact, a matter slightly removed from the immediate object of our visit this morning--and yet it is a question which I am going to press upon you, and which, should you feel so disposed, Mr. Grimm, you might possibly answer with great benefit to yourself. The long and short of it is this. Is it worth your while to put yourself right with the authorities and with me, or isn't it? I tell you, as man to man, I have a theory of my own about you and your disappearances." "I should have thought," Harvey Grimm remarked, after a brief pause, "that Inspector Ditchwater, having made himself so free with my apartments, would have been in a position to have told you everything himself. However, come this way." He led them into the bedroom. A portmanteau, not wholly unpacked, was open upon the stand. "My portmanteau," he pointed out, "which, as you have doubtless already ascertained from the hall-porter, came back with me the night before last. There's the label." Mr. Brodie turned it over and examined it. "Exford," he murmured.