“Are you the man with whom Guy Markenmore had supper at the Sceptre last Monday midnight?” he asked abruptly. “The man who booked a room there and never occupied it?”
“I am that man,” replied the stranger, with a ready nod and smile. “No other!”
“Do you mind telling me who you are?” asked Blick. “And what you are?”
“I do not! My name is Edward Lansbury, and I’m a financier, with businesses in New York and in London. Who are you and what’s your business?”
“Detective-Sergeant Blick, of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard! I have this case in hand, Mr. Lansbury, and I’ll be glad if you’ll tell me what you know about it.”
“Sure! Everything! That’s what I’ve run up from Falmouth for. Where’ll we talk?”
“Come this way,” said Blick. The plain-clothes men had come up behind him; he turned and whispered to them, and they went away in the direction of the police-station. “Don’t wait for me, Grimsdale,” he continued. “I shall be detained here for some time, so you can go back at once.”
But Grimsdale brought a hand out of his pocket, offering something to Lansbury.
“Your change, sir,” he said. “Three pound fourteen. Bill was twenty-six shillings, sir.”
Lansbury started, laughed, took the money, and handed some of the silver back.