T. B. stopped dead and faced the young man. He dropped the air of boredom right away.
"Protection?" he said quickly, "from whom?"
"That is just what he doesn't say--in fact, he's rather vague on that point--why don't you go up and see Delawn, the editor?"
"Yes," he nodded. "That is an idea. I will go at once."
In the holy of holies, the inner room within the inner room, wherein the editor of the London Morning Journal saw those visitors who were privileged to pass the outer portal, T. B. Smith sat, a sorely puzzled man, a scrap of disfigured paper in his hands.
He read it again and looked up at the editor.
"This might of course be a fake," he said.
"It doesn't read like a fake," said the other.
"Admitting your authority on the subject of fakes, Tom," said T. B.,--they were members of the same club, which fact in itself is a license for rudeness,--"I am still in the dark. Why does this--what is his name?"
"Why does this man Escoltier write to a newspaper, instead of coming straight to the police?"
"Because he is a Frenchman, I should imagine," said the editor. "The French have the newspaper instinct more highly developed than the English."
T. B. read the paper again. It was written in execrable English, but its purport was clear.
The writer could solve the mystery of Hyatt's death, and for the matter of that of the Moss murder.
"This sort of thing is fairly common," he said; "there never was a bad murder yet, but what the Yard received solutions by the score."
A little bell tinkled on the editor's desk, and he took up the receiver of the telephone.
"Yes?" he said, and listened. Then, "Send him up."
A few seconds later the door was opened, and a man was ushered into the room. Short and thick-set, with a two days' growth of beard on his chin, his nationality was apparent long before he spoke in the _argot_ of the lowly born Parisian.
His face was haggard, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep, and the hand that strayed to his mouth shook tremulously.
"I have to tell you," he began, "about M'sieur Moss and M'sieur Hyatt." His voice was thick, and as he spoke he glanced from side to side as though fearful of observation. There was something in his actions that vividly reminded the detective of his interview with Hyatt. "You understand," the man went on incoherently, "that I had long suspected N.H.C.--it was always so unintelligible. There was no such station and----"