“Mr. Watts—I wonder, now—I'm wishful to see the room where poor Robert Erskine took his life. I knew him as a boy, you see.” There was genuine feeling in the Scotsman's face. The detective opened the door. “Chief Inspector!” he called, but his superior was out of earshot. Watts rubbed his chin. “Well, sir, of course, strictly speaking, I should say no. But as you're in the case as it were, and a friend of the family—well, as it happens, I shall be at the Enterprise Hotel within the hour on business. I'll pick you up in the lounge there if you like, and let you just have a look at No. 14. The hotel doesn't intend to let it till Monday.” He was as good as his word, and took the solicitor up with him to the threshold of the fatal room. Mr. Russell shook his head slowly. “Pitiful, aye, pitiful indeed, to think of Robert Erskine come to such a pass that he was glad to take poison and shut himself up in yon box. Do you think there was a wumman at the bottom of it?” “There often is,” agreed Watts. Not until the adjourned inquest did the Yard intend a word to leak out which might suggest that the “suicide” was a murder. “Aye, just so,” murmured Mr. Russell as he tiptoed from the room. On the stairs they met Pointer, who gave them both a baleful glare. Watts would have explained, but his superior silenced him with a gesture. “Not out here. Mr. Russell, don't let us detain you, sir”; and the lawyer left the detective to a grim little interview back in No. 14. “My aim was to keep the man's identity a secret, as I told you.” The Chief Inspector's voice lost none of its edge for being carefully lowered; “and you bring the family solicitor to the hotel! Suppose the criminal is still in the house—you give him notice that we know who Eames was. Beale, or Cox, may both of them be staying under this very roof as Jones or Smith for aught we know!” Watts bent to the blast, and apologetically took himself off, inwardly swearing that never again would he yield to a kindly impulse. Pointer walked swiftly downstairs and knocked at the manager's door. He was greeted with rather forced cordiality. “Mr. Manager, I asked you once before if Mr. Eames left anything in the safe. You said no. We have learned to-day that he may have had some hundreds of pounds with him. Are you sure of the honesty of your booking clerks?” “Oh, quite! Absolutely.” There was no mistaking the conviction in the manager's tones, but also no mistaking the fact that he had turned very pale. “You have the only key to the safe, I understand?” “That is so.”