The detective took the damp print and examined it curiously in the light by the window. "Well--the only man who can really identify it is our friend at the Savoy Hotel. Let's take a taxi and go and see him." CHAPTER THIRTEEN. CONTAINS FURTHER DISCOVERIES. They found the hall-porter at the Savoy hotel, and showed him the print. It was not a very wonderful specimen of the photographer's art, but it was enough for Smeaton's old friend. "That's him--right enough!" the man in uniform exclaimed. "And you say that you were told his name was Stent by the lady we spoke about, and this gentleman has discovered him under another name. Well, I always thought there was something mysterious about him." After such confirmation it could no longer be doubted that Varney had run the supposed Stent to earth. He felt a distinct sense of triumph. He had hoped his exertions might have produced some startling results, but still, he had done something. Smeaton was not an envious man, and congratulated him heartily. "It's really a feather in your cap, my dear Varney," he said amiably. "You got on the right track this time." Varney thanked him for his encouraging words. "Now, what's the next move? I leave it to you." Smeaton thought a few seconds before he answered. When he spoke, he voiced the man's inmost thoughts. "I think the best thing you can do is to go back and keep up the sketching business. We want to find out all we can about that house and its mysterious inmates. And we especially want to know something about that invalid visitor. There is just a chance, of course, that you may find Mrs Saxton popping up there." As all this exactly coincided with his own theory, Varney acquiesced readily. He would go back to Horsham the next day, and resume his watch on Forest View. "You can't be watching in two places at once," added Smeaton presently. "So we will take up Farloe." So it was decided. Mrs Saxton having disappeared, with small likelihood of her return, there remained three people to be shadowed: the secretary, Bolinski, and the man who went by the name of Strange, and who, for reasons of his own, was keeping away from the Savoy, and coming to London as seldom as possible. Varney's discovery, of which he was not a little proud, was duly reported to Sheila by the young man himself, who called upon her as soon as he had left Smeaton. She could not but admire his energy and determination, and she told him so, in no measured terms. But when he had gone, she could not help thinking how futile it all seemed. "They all find a little something, and then they seem to come up against a dead end," she said to Wingate, when he paid her his usual daily visit. "Weeks have gone by, and the mystery is as deep as ever. How can it be otherwise? What have they got to go upon?" And Wingate, taking her slender hand in his and pressing it, agreed that it was so. He felt, as she did, that anything would be better than this horrible uncertainty.