"Nothing more now, sir," answered Chettle. "But look here—you're not going back to town to-night?"
"Why, that's just what I meant to do," replied Allerdyke. "There's naught to stop here for, is there?"
"I'm expecting a message from the Christiania police some time this afternoon or evening," said Chettle. "I cabled to them yesterday making full inquiries about Lydenberg—he represented himself here, to Dr. Orwin and the police-surgeons especially, as being a medical man in practice in Christiania, who had come across to Hull on some entirely private family business. Now, we've made the most exhaustive inquiries here in Hull—there isn't a soul in the town knows anything whatever of Lydenberg! I'm as certain as I am that I see you that he'd no business here at all—except to kill and rob your cousin. And so, of course, we want to know if he really was what he said he was, over there. I pressed upon the Christiania police to let me know all they could within thirty-six hours. So if you'll stop the night here, I'll likely be able to show you their reply to me."
"Right!" answered Allerdyke. "I'll put up at the Station Hotel. You come and have your dinner with me there at seven o'clock."
"Much obliged, Mr. Allerdyke," replied Chettle. "I'll come."
Then Allerdyke went off to the General Post Office and sent a telegram to his housekeeper in Bradford—
"Send off at once by registered parcel post to me at Waldorf Hotel, London, the morocco-bound photograph album lying on right-hand corner of my writing-desk in the library.—MARSHALL ALLERDYKE."
He went out of the post-office laughing cynically. Bit by bit things were coming out, he said to himself as he strolled away towards the hotel; link after link the chain was being forged. But around whom, in the end, was it going to be fastened? It was the first time in his life that he had ever been brought face to face with crime, and the seeking out of the criminal was beginning to fascinate him.
"Egad, it's a queer business!" he muttered. "A thread here, a thread there!—Heaven knows what it'll all come to. But this Chettle's a good 'un—he's like to do things."
Chettle joined him in the smoking-room of the hotel at a quarter to seven, and immediately produced a telegram.