Poole made a note of the address, asked the manager to let him know at once if Lessingham came to the hotel, and took his departure. What he had just learnt puzzled him considerably, but it did not altogether surprise him. According to Mr. Blagge, Lessingham had been in London the previous afternoon; he might of course have arrived from Brussels in the morning and returned the same night, but according to M. Blertot, when he did that he generally called at the hotel for letters. According to Mr. Blagge again, Lessingham’s visits to the Victory Finance office corresponded—so far as regards intervals—with his visits to the hotel; it would be a simple matter to check the actual dates with the list he had noted down from the “Antwerp’s” Visitors’ Book. That must remain till tomorrow, however; Poole did not feel inclined to return to Fenchurch Street that evening. He wanted, before taking any further action, to get down to pencil and paper and work out the possibilities of the Wraile alibi—male and female. When he knew exactly what he was up against he would know where to begin in his task of breaking it down. As he walked down the Strand towards Whitehall his mind reverted, by a natural chain of thought, to the last occasion on which he had been in that romantic thoroughfare in connection with the case, and so, by a further step, to the rather melodramatic interview that he had had with the hump-backed moneylender, Silence. It struck him that he had allowed that unsavoury episode to pass too completely into the back of his mind; could it be that he had deliberately pushed it there, influenced, as Chief Inspector Barrod had hinted, by his sympathy for—perhaps, even his attraction to—Ryland Fratten’s charming “sister”? Now, as he walked, he deliberately forced himself to review the ugly subject again. Silence had told him that on 17th October, a week before Sir Garth’s death, Ryland Fratten had borrowed from him £15,000—at an exorbitant rate of interest—on the sole security of a note from Sir Horace Spavage saying that Sir Garth’s expectation of life was very short. The money was lent for three months only, so that Ryland must have expected the death within that period. What justification had he for doing so? Sir Horace Spavage certainly had put no such limit on his patient’s life, though he had not been in the least surprised when death had come to him so suddenly. He determined to try and see the actual note, or at any rate to get Sir Horace’s version of what it contained. In the meantime he resolved to review Ryland Fratten’s connection with the case, to keep a closer eye upon his movements, and to thrust all unprofessional sympathy out of his mind. He had taken up the trail of Lessingham and the Wrailes with such keenness that he had neglected his first objective; it was not impossible that Ryland might be involved with them. CHAPTER XXIV Alibi