He moved towards the door, and as I had no further business in the rooms, I followed, and leaving him to lock up, I took my way back to our chambers. When Thorndyke returned to town a couple of days later, I mentioned the case to him. But what Badger had said appeared to be true. It was a case of ascertaining the identity of the stranger who had visited the dead man on that fatal night, and this seemed to be a matter for the police rather than for us. So the case remained in abeyance until the evening following the inquest, when Mr. Bidwell called on us, accompanied by a Mr. Carston, whom he introduced as an old friend of his and of Herrington’s family. “I have called,” he said, “to bring you a full report of the evidence at the inquest. I had a shorthand writer there, and this is a typed transcript of his notes. Nothing fresh transpired beyond what Dr. Jervis knows and has probably told you, but I thought you had better have all the information in writing.” “There is no clue as to who the suspicious visitor was, I suppose?” said Thorndyke. “Not the slightest,” replied Bidwell. “The porter’s description is all they have to go on, and of course it would apply to hundreds of persons. But, in connexion with that, there is a question on which I should like to take your opinion. Poor Herrington once mentioned to me that he was subjected to a good deal of annoyance by a certain person who from time to time applied to him for financial help. I gathered that some sort of claim was advanced, and that the demands for money were more or less of the nature of blackmail. Giles didn’t say who the person was, but I got the impression that he was a relative. Now, my friend Carston, who attended the inquest with me, noticed that the porter’s description of the stranger would apply fairly well to a nephew of Giles’s, whom he knows slightly and who is a somewhat shady character; and the question that Carston and I have been debating is whether these facts ought to be communicated to the police. It is a serious matter to put a man under suspicion on such very slender data; and yet----” “And yet,” said Carston, “the facts certainly fit the circumstances. This fellow--his name is Godfrey Herrington--is a typical ne’er-do-weel. Nobody knows how he lives. He doesn’t appear to do any work. And then there is the personality of the deceased. I didn’t know Giles Herrington very well, but I knew his brother, Sir Gilbert, pretty intimately, and if Giles was at all like him, a catastrophe might easily have occurred.” “What was Sir Gilbert’s special characteristic?” Thorndyke asked.