CHAPTER X

DICK PERSONALLY undertook the investigation into Lordy Brown’s movements. He had been living at an hotel in Norfolk Street, occupying one of the cheapest bedrooms at the top of the house. The night porter, with whom Brown had worked up some kind of a friendship—he was in the habit of sitting on the steps in the early hours of the morning, smoking a cigar and discussing his adventures—told the detective very little about the man that he did not already know. Brown liked to describe his hairbreadth escapes from death…