The sou’wester also fitted from this point of view into the scheme of things, but it added a distinctive suggestion all its own: that of the sea. French’s thoughts turned towards a voyage. But it could not be an ordinary voyage in a well-appointed liner, where peaches and matches and novels would be as plentiful as in the heart of London. Nor did it seem likely that it could be a trip in the Enid. Such a craft could not remain out of touch with land for so long a period as these stores seemed to postulate. French could not think of anything that seemed exactly to meet the case, though he registered the idea of an expedition as one to be kept in view.
Leaving the point for the time being, he turned over the paper and began to examine its other side.
It formed the middle portion of an old hotel bill, the top and bottom having been torn off. The items indicated a stay of one night only being merely for bed and breakfast. The name of the hotel had been torn off with the bill head, and also all but a few letters of the green rubber receipt stamp at the bottom. French felt that if he could only ascertain the identity of the hotel it might afford him a valuable clue, and he settled down to study it in as close detail as possible.
He recalled two statements that Speedwell had made about Dangle. First, the melancholy detective had said that commencing about a fortnight after the acquisition by the gang of Price’s letter and the tracing, Dangle had begun paying frequent visits to the Continent or Ireland, and secondly, that in a tube lift he had overheard Dangle say that he was crossing on a given night, but would be back the next. French thought he might take it for granted that this bill had been incurred on one of these trips. He wondered if Dangle had always visited the same place, as, if so, the bill would refer to an hotel near enough to England to be visited in one day. Of none of this was there any evidence, but French believed that it was sufficiently probable to be taken as a working hypothesis. If it led nowhere, he could try something else.
Assuming then that one could cross to the place in one night and return the next, it was obvious that it must be comparatively close to England, and, the language on the bill being French, it must be in France or Belgium. He took an atlas and a Continental Bradshaw, and began to look out the area over which this condition obtained. Soon he saw that while the whole of Belgium and the northwest of France, bounded by a rough line drawn through Chalons, Nancy, Dijon, Angoulême, Chartres, and Brest, were within the possible limit, giving a reasonable time in which to transact business, it was more than likely the place did not lie east of Brussels and Paris.
He turned back to the torn bill. Could he learn nothing from it?
First, as to the charges. With the franc standing at eighty, twenty four francs seemed plenty for a single room, though it was by no means exorbitant. It and the 4.50 fr. for petit déjeuner suggested a fairly good hotel—probably what might be termed good second-class—not one of the great hotels de luxe like the Savoy in London or the Crillon or Claridge’s in Paris, but one that ordinary people patronized, and which would be well known in its own town.
Of all the information available, the most promising line of research seemed that of the rubber stamp, and to that French now turned his attention. The three lines read:
| . . . uit |
| . . . lon, |
| . . . S. |