Up till that morning I had—I now discovered—been practically under arrest as having attempted suicide, but now that it was clear that I had been a victim of a plot, the red-faced constable whom I had noticed idling about the room, had been withdrawn. The papers had got hold of the story, and had made a “mystery” out of it, to Hensman’s intense disgust. On seeing the newspaper reports he had hurried from North Wales to see me.
“You’ve been an infernal fool, Rex!” he said. “I’ve telephoned to old Pearson at Duddington. He is quite well. His son never rang you up, and he doesn’t want to add a codicil to his will. You’ve been had—my dear fellow! You ought to have heeded those warnings concerning that little married lady!”
That was all the sympathy I got from him!
I told the bald-headed hotel-manager of my chat with the rugged-faced commercial traveler from Bradford, who was a constant guest at the hotel and who had worn that curious onyx tie-pin like a little human eye—that pin that I had seen in my strange nightmare.
“Describe him again,” he said looking into my face rather puzzled.
I did so, whereupon he replied:—
“I recollect seeing him at dinner. He was in Number Thirty-Four, the room immediately above yours. But he was a complete stranger. I’ve never seen him here before. I don’t think he was a commercial. At least he had no samples. The only commercial travelers we had were Mr. Sharp from London, Mr. Watson from Manchester and Mr. Evans from Thomas’s, the flannel manufacturers of Welshpool. I had a long chat with Mr. Evans in the commercial room before we went to bed. He remarked that there were only three travelers that night—for it was unusual. We generally have eight or nine here, all of them known to us—except at the week-end.”
“Then the man who told me about old Mr. Brimelow was evidently not a commercial!” I remarked.
“Old Mr. Brimelow. Who is he?”
“The man from Bradford told me that he was once proprietor here a few years ago.”