The landlord was a big, red-faced man with a bluff manner. Tanner, after ordering some ale, engaged him in conversation, deftly pumping him. But he learned nothing. The man had not seen Sir William, nor did the manufacturer’s name convey anything to him. Tanner tried each of the other three corner shops of the cross-roads, but again without result. Then, thinking that small tobacconists and news-agents sometimes act as mediums between persons who do not wish their connection to be known, he called at all the shops of these kinds in the immediate neighbourhood. Again he was disappointed, as he was also when he visited the pawnbroker’s. By this time it was getting late, and he turned his steps homeward, intending to return on the next morning and begin a house-to-house visitation in the vicinity of the cross streets. As he walked down the road towards Gower Street, he noticed three buildings which he thought looked more the kind of place for a rendezvous than any he had yet seen. Two were shabby and rather squalid looking restaurants, the third a building slightly larger and more pretentious than its neighbours. In faded letters it bore the legend ‘Judd’s Family & Commercial Hotel’. Tanner decided that, before beginning on the houses of Pate’s Lane, he would try these three. Next morning he drew blank in the first of the restaurants. A visit to the second was equally fruitless. But when he reached the hotel he had a stroke of luck. A rather untidy porter was polishing the brass bell-push, and Tanner engaged him in conversation. Yes, he remembered a well-dressed old gentleman calling about half-past three on that Monday, three weeks earlier. He would recognise him if he saw him. Yes, he was sure that was his photograph. The gentleman had asked was a Mr Douglas staying in the hotel, and on being answered in the affirmative he had gone up to the latter’s bedroom and remained with him for about half an hour. Then he had left, and that was all the porter knew. ‘And what sort of a man was Mr Douglas?’ Tanner asked. ‘A small man, very small and thin,’ the porter returned. ‘Looked as ’ow a breath of wind would ’ave blown ’im away. Sort of scared too, I thought.’ Tanner pricked up his ears. ‘What was he like in face?’ he asked. ‘’E was getting on in years—maybe sixty or more, and ’e ’ad a small, grey goatee beard, and a moustache, and wore spectacles. ’E spoke like an American man and was a bit free with ’is langwidge, damning and cursing about everything.’ At last! Was this the man for whom he and Sergeant Longwell had been searching—the man who had made the fifth set of tracks at Luce Manor, and who had travelled from St Albans to London on the morning after the crime? With thinly veiled eagerness Tanner continued his questions. ‘Who cleans the boots here?’ The porter looked interested. ‘I do,’ he replied, ‘and why that?’ ‘Only this. Can you remember what sort of boots this man Douglas wore?’