"What!" Lawrence shouted. "What! Say that again."
"I hope there is nothing wrong, sir," asked Prout.
"Wrong?" Lawrence cried as he paced the room. "Not much. Why, you are giving me the master key to the situation. Look me up again this evening. I guess I shall be able to astonish you. I'm off to Frampton's now. I must have a copy of that paper if it costs me a hundred pounds."
Frampton's establishment consisted merely of cellars where grimy men seemed to be busy with piles of journals. After a little trouble and a reference or two to a ponderous ledger a pile of the Talk of the Town was produced. There were not more than two hundred altogether, but Lawrence had the satisfaction of knowing that they were complete. Some of them were duplicated many times.
At the end of an hour Lawrence found what he wanted. Here was the portrait of a striking woman in Spanish costume, her eyes were dark, her hair wonderfully fair. Lawrence's hands trembled a little as he folded up the paper.
"And what do you want for this?" he asked.
Frampton incidentally replied that half a crown was the price. It would have been cheap to the purchaser at a thousand times the money. It was a little later that Bruce came round to the novelist's rooms in response to an urgent telephone message. He looked pale and anxious; he was fighting hard, but he found that the odds were terribly against him.
"Have you made any new discoveries?" he asked.
"I flatter myself I have," said Lawrence. "Here is a copy of a paper now extinct called the Talk of the Town. On the front page is a photo of a Spanish dancer. Behold she is called Lalage, the Spanish premiere. Look and see if you have ever seen her before."
"Lalage," Bruce cried. "The Spanish--and the same name! Why, that is the same woman who received me on that fatal night at the corner house!"