You see, we are taking the ten-forty-five from Victoria, to connect with the Dover-Calais boat."

"You were taking the ten-forty-five from Victoria," Duff corrected him.

"Ah, yes, of course--we were leaving at that hour, I should have said. And now--what now, Inspector?"

"That's rather difficult to say," Duff answered. "We shall see. I'll go up-stairs, Mr. Kent, if I may."

He did not wait for an answer, but went quickly out. A lift operator who was wont to boast of his great-grandchildren took him up to the third floor. In the doorway of room 28, he encountered Hayley.

"Oh, hello, Duff," the man from Vine Street said. "Come in."

Duff entered a large bedroom in which the odor of flashlight powder was strong. The room was furnished in such fashion that, had Queen Victoria entered with him, she would have taken off her bonnet and sat down in the nearest rocking-chair. She would have felt at home. The bed stood in an alcove at the rear, far from the windows. On it lay the body of a man well along in years--the late sixties, Duff guessed. It did not need the luggage strap, still bound about the thin throat of the dead man, to tell Duff that he had died by strangulation, and the detective's keen eyes saw also that the body presented every evidence of a frantic and fruitless struggle.

"Divisional surgeon been here?" Duff inquired.

"Yes--he's made his report and gone," Hayley replied. "He tells me the chap's been dead about four hours." Duff stepped forward and removed, with his handkerchief, the luggage strap, which he handed to the finger-print man.. Then he began a careful examination of all that was mortal of Mr. Hugh Morris Drake, of Detroit. He lifted the left arm, and bent back the clenched fingers of the hand. As he prepared to do the same with the right, an exclamation of interest escaped him. From between the lean stiff fingers something glittered--a link from a slender, platinum watch-chain. Duff released the object the right hand was clutching, and it fell to the bed. Three links of the chain, and on the end, a small key.

Hayley came close, and together they studied the find as it lay on Duff's handkerchief. On one side of the key was the number "3260" and on the other, the words: "Dietrich Safe and Lock Company, Canton, Ohio." Duff glanced at the blank face on the pillow.

"Good old boy," he remarked softly. "He tried to help us. Tore off the end of his assailant's watch-chain--and kept it, by gad."

He knelt beside the bed for a closer examination of the floor. Some one entered the room, but Duff was for the moment too engrossed to look up. When he finally did so, what he saw caused him to leap to his feet, giving the knees of his trousers a hasty brush in passing. A slender and attractive American girl was standing there, looking at him with eyes which, he was not too busy to note, were something rather special in that line.

"Ah--er--good morning," the detective said.

"Good morning," the girl answered gravely. "I'm Pamela Potter, and Mr. Drake--was my grandfather. I presume you're from Scotland Yard.