Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/38

 afternoon." She paused, looking speculatively at the detective. "What's your theory about it?" she asked. "I suppose you have one?"

"Looks as if somebody followed him here to your flat, watched you leave it, came in, and knocked him down in order to get possession of that paper," said Wedgwood. "Some important secret in it, no doubt."

"I wonder what, now?" said Miss Tandy. "Interesting, I'm sure. Do you think you'll find out?"

Wedgwood permitted himself to smile. He made a non-committal reply, and went away—to seek the nearest public library. There he consulted the last edition of a dependable gazetteer, only to find that there was no such place as Mortover, city, town, village, or hamlet, in the United Kingdom, and no such name in the London Directory. He wasted no time in looking at a dictionary; though he was far from being a scholar, he felt assured that Mortover was not a word to be found in any of the dictionaries, from Johnson to Murray.

Going back to the police-station, Wedgwood found a man awaiting him; an elderly man, in conversation with the station-sergeant.

"Gentleman's called to give you a bit of information about the man who was murdered last night," said the station-sergeant as Wedg-