[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
A FAINT CLUE.
It was a day or two later before Lawrence saw Prout again. In the meantime he had not been idle. In some vague way or another he felt sure he was on the track of the Corner House mystery. A dozen theories were formed and abandoned. If Prout had only possessed Lawrence's imagination!
"But is there anything in the letters?" the latter asked after Prout had given him a precis of their contents. "Something we can go by?"
"I'm afraid not, sir," Prout admitted. "The only thing I have established so far is that my prisoner is the brother of the murdered man. Oddly enough, he has no idea that the writer of those letters is dead. And as he declines to disclose his own name, we cannot discover the identity of his murdered brother."
Lawrence read over the letters carefully, there was less here than he expected. They were all full of vague schemes of making money by various shady ways, and all bewailed the fact that the writer could not obtain the necessary capital to start. Really the letters were hardly worth reading.
But patience is generally rewarded. Here was a hiatus after a series of regular dates. The writer had been drinking heavily, somebody had got hold of him, and was detaining him somewhere against his will. He was not allowed to say where he was. His last letter of the series hinted at a possibility of large sums of money.
"I'm afraid it's no good, sir," said Prout when Lawrence had finished.
"I don't quite agree with you," Lawrence said. "The man was detained again his will. Where was he detained? In the Corner House? Because his gaoler was afraid of his discretion. Now go a step further and ask who detained him yonder. You can answer that question for yourself."