Our next step in the inquiry was a domiciliary visit to Beacon House.
While the public, including Mr. Day, were expecting to see his nephew, we, of course, were hoping to find old Gregory.
In this we were disappointed. Already Treeton knew that both men were missing from their lodgings. Yet while the police were watching everywhere for the dandified young man from London, the queer, white-haired old Sheffield steel manufacturer had slipped through their fingers and vanished as though the earth had swallowed him up.
Mrs. Dean's house was a typical seaside lodging-house, plainly and comfortably furnished--a double-fronted house painted pale blue, with large airy rooms and bay windows, which, situated high up and on the very edge of the cliff, commanded extensive views up and down the coast.
The sitting-room occupied by uncle and nephew, proved to be a big apartment on the first-floor, to the left of the entrance. The houses in that row had a front door from the asphalt path along the edge of the cliff and also a back entrance abutting upon the narrow street which ran into the centre of the town. Therefore, the hall went from back to front, the staircase ascending in the centre.
The room in which I stood with the detectives, was large, with a cheerful lattice-work wall-paper, and substantial leather-covered furniture. In the window was placed a writing-table, and upon it a telescope mounted on a stand. A comfortable couch was placed against the wall, while before the fire-place were a couple of deep-seated easy chairs, and a large oval table in the centre.
Indeed, the room possessed an air of homely comfort, with an absence of the inartistic seldom found in seaside apartments. The windows were open and the light breeze from the sun-lit sea slowly fanned the lace curtains. On the writing-table lay a quantity of papers, mostly tradesmen's receipts--all of which the old gentleman carefully preserved--some newspapers, a tin of tobacco, and several pipes.
Beside the fire-place lay a pair of Egyptian slippers in crimson morocco, evidently the property of young Craig, while his straw hat and cane lay upon the couch, together with the fawn Burberry coat which had been one of the common objects in Cromer. Everywhere were signs of occupation. Indeed, the cushions in the easy chairs were crumpled just as if the two men had only a little while before arisen from them, while in the grate were a number of ends of those gold-tipped cigarettes without which Craig was never seen.