“No, sir. He has taken a suitcase with him, a brown leather one of medium size. I got the description from Mrs. Welsh. She says she noticed it here yesterday afternoon and it’s gone now. And he has taken all his outer clothes, his suits and overcoats and shoes, but most of his socks and underclothing are here in these drawers. I’ve been through everything, but I’ve not found anything useful.”
“Let’s have a look.”
French hastily ran through the missing man’s effects. “Most of this stuff is foreign,” he observed, as he glanced over the clothes. “You see the Argentine marking on the collars and shirts. No, I don’t think there’s much to help us there. No books or papers?”
“None, sir. But there’s a big heap of burnt paper in the grate.”
“So I saw. We’ll go through it later on. Now ask the landlady to come here. Just sit down, Mrs. Welsh, will you? I want to know if you can tell me anything to help me to find your lodger. I’m sorry to say he is wanted on a very serious charge—murder, in fact. Therefore, you will understand how necessary it is that you should tell me all you know.”
Mrs. Welsh was thunderstruck, declaring again and again that she would not have believed it of so nice a gentleman. She was also terrified lest her rooms should suffer through the inevitable publicity. But she realised her duty and did her best to answer French’s questions.
For a long time he gained no useful information, then at last an important point came out, though not in connection with his immediate objective.
Having given up for the moment the question of Pyke’s destination, French was casting around to see if he could learn anything connecting him with the crime, when he chanced to ask, had Mr. Pyke a typewriter?
“Not lately, he hadn’t,” Mrs. Welsh answered, “but he did have one for a time. I don’t know why he got it, for I never knew him to use it. But he had it there on the table for about three weeks.”
“Oh!” said French, interested. “When was that?”