"Did you overhear their conversation, or any of it?"
"A good deal—at first. Afterwards, your grandfather began to whisper, and I heard nothing of that. But one reason I had for calling upon you this morning was that I might tell you what I did overhear, and another that I might ask you some questions arising out of what I heard. Mr. Hannaford was talking to this man, now missing, about some portrait or photograph. Evidently it was of a lady whom he, your grandfather, had known ten years ago; whom the other man had also known. Your grandfather said that when they got to his hotel he would show the portrait to the other man who, he asserted, would be sure to recognise it. Now, had Mr. Hannaford said anything to you? Do you know anything about his bringing any friend of his to this hotel last night? And do you know anything about any portrait or photograph such as that to which he referred?"
"About bringing anyone here—no! He never said anything to me about it. But about a photograph, or rather about a print of one—yes. I do know something about that."
"What?" asked Hetherwick eagerly.
"Well, this," she answered. "My grandfather, who, as I dare say you know by this time, was for a good many years Superintendent of Police at Sellithwaite, had a habit of cutting things out of newspapers—paragraphs, accounts of criminal trials, and so on. He had several boxes full of such cuttings. When we were coming to town the other day I saw him cut a photograph out of some illustrated paper he was reading in the train, and put it away in his pocket-book—in a pocket-book, I ought to say, for he had two or three pocket-books. This morning I was looking through various things which he had left lying about on his dressing-table upstairs, and in one of his pocket-books I found the photograph which he cut out in the train. That must be the one you mention—it's of a very handsome, distinguished-looking woman."
"If I may see it——" suggested Hetherwick.
Within a couple of minutes he had the cutting in his hand—a scrap of paper, neatly snipped out of its surrounding letterpress, which was a print of a photograph of a woman of apparently thirty-five to forty years of age, evidently of high position, and certainly, as Rhona Hannaford had remarked, of handsome and distinguished features. But it was not at the photograph that Hetherwick gazed with eyes into which surmise and speculation were beginning to steal; after a mere glance at it, his attention fixed itself on some pencilled words on the margin at its sides:
"Through my hands ten years ago!"
"Is that your grandfather's writing?" he inquired suddenly.
"Yes, that's his," replied Rhona. "He had a habit of pencilling notes and comments on his cuttings—all sorts of remarks."