"What is it?" his host inquired again.
"Have you been playing some infernal trick on me, Gouldesbrough?" Charliewood said.
"No; why?"
"Because this cigarette-case, by some strange chance, is the cigarette-case of the man we've been talking about, this Guy Rathbone!"
He stood up, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of the fur coat as he did so. Then he pulled out a letter, stamped and addressed and obviously ready for the post.
"Good heavens!" he said, "here's something else. It's a letter for the post."
"Who is it addressed to?" Sir William asked in a curious voice.
Charliewood looked at it and started again.
"As I live," he answered, "it's addressed to Miss Poole, 100A, Curzon Street!"
There was a curious silence for a moment or two. Both men looked at each other, and mingled astonishment and alarm were on the face of either. The whole thing seemed uncanny. They seemed, while concocting something like a plot, to have trodden unawares into another.