“He was a chance customer, evidently,” remarked the elder of the girls in neat black. “He arrived, you say, by the morning East Coast express, therefore he may just have had breakfast and gone on. Many people do that, and catch their connections for the North. In such a case we never see them. Both myself and my friend here were on duty all day on Monday.”
“I certainly have never seen the gentleman to my knowledge!” declared the other.
“But he must, I think, have received two telegrams.”
“I remember one telegram, but I do not recollect the other. We have so many wires here in the course of the day, you know,” the girl replied. “But what I do recollect is being rung up on the telephone from London on the following day, with an inquiry whether the gentleman was staying here.”
“You don’t know who rang you up?” I asked.
“I haven’t any idea!” she laughed. “It may have been the police. They’ve done so before now.”
“Of course he might have stayed here in another name and taken telegrams addressed to him as Greer,” I suggested.
“I scarcely think so,” replied the elder of the pair, a tall, smart, business-like woman. “If he had, one of us would, no doubt, have remembered him. I’d have a chat to the hall-porter at the station-entrance if I were you,” she added.
I therefore sought out the tall, liveried man she had indicated, and again to him exhibited the portrait.
He remembered the Professor quite distinctly, he told me. The visitor deposited in his charge a kit-bag and suit-case, remarking that he was not quite certain if he would remain the night, and passed on into the hotel. “That was about 7:35 in the morning.”