Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/39

 wood walked in. "Saw about it in the papers this morning."

"The bare announcement," remarked the caller, turning to Wedgwood. "I knew John Wraypoole. My name is Hilsdale—I'm a second-hand bookseller in Hart Street. Wraypoole often dropped in at my shop. Indeed, he was in there yesterday, about this time—noon."

"Do you know anything about his private affairs?" asked the detective.

"Scarcely anything. I've heard him say that he had a brother—Thomas—a tradesman somewhere in Wandsworth, and that they both came to London when they were mere boys. They came from Derbyshire."

"He—this dead man—was a great hand at Derbyshire history, I'm given to understand," remarked Wedgwood. "I learnt that at the British Museum."

"He was! He specialized in that subject," assented Hilsdale. "And it's just about that that I came round to see you. There may be something in what I've to tell, and there may be nothing at all. But it's this—when Wraypoole dropped in to see me yesterday morning, I hadn't set eyes on him for about a fortnight, which was unusual, for as a rule he looked in nearly every day, when he left the British Museum Library to get his bit of lunch. I