“Right, it shall be done,” replied Sellars. “Now, as I have said, I don’t know either of the men well, and I can’t get any information from them. But I do know pretty intimately a man who is a great pal of Sir George; he’s a member of White’s, a good, garrulous sort of person, and he’ll talk by the hour when you once get him started. I’ll tap him as soon as I can get the chance. He’s much older than I, of course, but we are rather pals, and I’ll make him give me what I want.”
Lane did not possess a very keen sense of humour, his calling did not greatly encourage it, but he was a bit tickled by the gusto with which this remarkable young man, who hid his talents so successfully under that indifferent exterior, set about the task of extracting information from his numerous friends and acquaintances.
For it was one of his greatest assets, moving as he did in so many various circles, that if he could not get what he wanted directly, he could always do so indirectly. Here, for example, although he did not know Sir George very well, he was more than intimate with that gentleman’s great friend, whom, of course, he could pump with greater freedom than Sir George himself. Presently he took his leave, promising to let Lane know the result of his investigations at the earliest moment.
He appeared a couple of days later. “He rose to the fly beautifully,” he said in that brisk voice which he always assumed when he was engaged on strict business. “He has got it all pat. Sir George had a younger brother Archibald, a bit of a rolling-stone. He couldn’t make good here, so his family packed him off to Australia to try what a change of climate might do. He didn’t do very well there, but he didn’t come back. He married—but my friend doesn’t know the maiden name of his wife; Sir George had either never mentioned it, or he had forgotten it. Anyway, there was one child, the boy Archie, named after his father. The mother died a few years after his birth. The father died later in Melbourne. When the young one was grown up, Sir George sent for him to come home, and adopted him. There’s the whole history cut and dried for you.”
“And very lucidly told too,” said Mr. Lane approvingly. Sellars knew him well now, and he inferred from the careful way in which he entered the details in his notebook that he attached great importance to the information. So he did, much more than the young man guessed; this he was to learn later on.
To be a really great detective a man must have a certain amount of inspiration and imagination, and Lane possessed both these in a remarkable degree. While ruminating over the various problems of this puzzling case, one of these flashes of inspiration had come to him, and he intended to test it. But for the present, he was not going to take Sellars into his confidence in case it proved to be wrong.
The young man shortly took his leave and returned to his modest rooms in Bennett Street. To-morrow, he was going to embark on his investigations into Mrs. Morrice’s past, and it behoved him to set his affairs in order, in a sense, so as to be left free to devote his whole energies to the task.
This he easily did, being a very methodical and business-like person, although most of his acquaintances regarded him only as a saunterer through life, a frequenter of fashionable salons. He posted his little paragraphs of Society gossip to his editor, he wrote certain instructions to his bookmaker, he wrote and despatched a short breezy article on current topics to a newspaper which published his effusions at regular intervals. Then he felt himself free to embark on the great adventure to which he was looking forward, for he revelled in detective work as much as the great Lane himself.
Poor Rosabelle had gone home after that interview in a very crestfallen and despondent mood, for she had pinned her faith to those finger-marks, and in prophetic imagination had seen her lover restored to his old place in the esteem of all who were in the terrible secret.