"Well, then, it's in the top long drawer of the desk he used to use--if my clerk has not appropriated it to his own use." Langholm held his breath as he went to the drawer in question. In another instant his breath escaped him in a sigh of thankfulness. The "Universal Diary" (for the year before) was there, sure enough. And it was attached to a pink blotter precisely similar to that upon which Mr. Crofts still drummed with idle fingers. "Anything more I can show you?" inquired that worthy, humorously. Langholm was gazing intently, not at the diary, but at the pink blotting-paper. Suddenly he looked up. "You say that was the last letter he ever wrote in your office?" "The very last." "Then--yes--you can show me a looking-glass if you have one!" Crofts had a small one on his chimney-piece. "By the Lord Harry," said he, handing it, "but you tip-top 'tecs are a leery lot!" CHAPTER XXIV ONE WHO WAS NOT BIDDEN Langholm went north next morning by the ten o'clock express from King's Cross. He had been but four nights in town, and not four days, yet to Langholm they might have been weeks, for he had never felt so much and slept so little in all his life. He had also done a good deal; but it is the moments of keen sensation that make up the really crowded hours, and Langholm was to run the gamut of his emotions before this memorable week was out. In psychological experience it was to be, for him, a little lifetime in itself; indeed, the week seemed that already, while it was still young, and comparatively poor in incident and surprise. He had bought magazines and the literary papers for his journey, but he could concentrate his mind on nothing, and only the exigencies of railway travelling kept him off his legs. Luckily for Langholm, however, sleep came to him when least expected, in his cool corner of the corridor train, and he only awoke in time for luncheon before the change at York. His tired brain was vastly refreshed, but so far he could not concentrate it, even on the events of these eventful days. He was still in the thick of them. A sense of proportion was as yet impossible, and a consecutive review the most difficult of intellectual feats. Langholm was too excited, and the situation too identical with suspense, for a clear sight of all its bearings and potentialities; and then there was the stern self-discipline, the determined bridling of the imagination, in which he had not yet relaxed. Once in the night, however, in the hopeless hours between darkness and broad day, he had seen clearly for a while, and there and then pinned his vision down to paper. It concerned only one aspect of the case, but this was how Langholm found that he had stated it, on taking out his pocket-book during the final stages of his journey-- PROVISIONAL CASE AGAINST ---- ---- ---- 1. Was in Sloane Street on the night of the murder, at an hotel about a mile from the house in which the murder was committed. This can be proved.