From my arrival at eleven till half-past one I remained on the alert, but saw no one I knew. Therefore I retired to bed, thoroughly worn-out by that constant vigil. Yet I was in no way disheartened. The false Professor had started from Edinburgh for that destination, and was, I felt confident, staying there under another name. It only lay with me to unmask him, or to wait until the pair met clandestinely, and then to demand to know the truth. Surely in all the annals of crime there had never been one so surrounded by complex circumstances as the tragedy of Sussex Place, and assuredly, too, no innocent man had been more ingeniously misled than my unfortunate self. Next day, from eight o'clock in the morning till late at night, I idled about the big hotel, ever anxious and ever watchful. I kept an eye upon each arrival and each departure. Then I became slowly and against my will, convinced that the false Professor had not come to that hotel, but had put up somewhere else, well knowing that he could obtain the telegraphic message from Kirk whenever he cared to step in and take it from the board. Again, even though at the heels of the conspirators, was I yet being outwitted--a fact which became the more impressed upon me on the third day of my futile expectancy. Hourly I watched that telegraph-board, intending to annex quietly any message addressed to Martin, and act upon any appointment it contained. But, alas! my watchfulness remained unrewarded. Twice there had arrived men slightly resembling the dead Professor, clean-shaven and active, but by careful observation I discovered that one was a commercial traveller whose samples had been left below in the station, and the other was a well-known iron merchant of Walsall. The false Professor, the man who was plainly in association with the mysterious Kirk, was clearly in Glasgow, yet how was it possible for me to do more than I was doing towards his unmasking? Put to yourself that problem, you, my friend, for whom I have chronicled this plain, unvarnished story of what actually occurred to me in the year of grace 1907, and inquire of yourself its solution. "Who killed Professor Greer?" CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A REMARKABLE TRUTH. The morning was cold, with fine driving rain, when at eight o'clock I alighted from a hansom before my own house in Bath Road, and entered with my latch-key. In the dining-room I found Annie, the housemaid, in the act of lighting the fire, but turning suddenly upon me with surprise, she exclaimed: "Oh, sir! You gave me quite a turn! We didn't expect to see you back again just yet." "Why not?" I inquired, with some surprise. "We thought you were with the mistress, sir." "With my wife. What do you mean?" "Mrs. Holford obeyed your telegram, sir, and has left for Italy." "For Italy!" I gasped. "Where's Miss Gwen? Go and ask her if she can see me at once." And I followed the maid upstairs.