“’As Burgess will already have told you, Richard Morris knew Hume.  The latter was a frequent visitor to a shop which the inventor maintained in the outskirts, as was the mute Locke.  I have talked with an old mechanic who worked for Morris at the time; he told me that the inventor had made a stubborn fight against the drink habit and seemed likely to conquer it up to the time that he became acquainted with Hume.  After this, however, he became as much a slave to it as ever.  The invention, or whatever it was, never got beyond the paper stage; for thereafter Richard Morris spent his days in sleep and his nights at the once famous Coffin Club.’”

Ashton-Kirk arose eagerly.

“There is more,” said he, “but it is scarcely of interest.”  Placing the report upon the table, he added:  “You have heard of the Coffin Club, Pen?”

“Of course.  It met in an underground place somewhere, didn’t it?  And if I remember right, it was fitted up like the Cafe Au Mort in Paris.”

“Something of the sort.”  The investigator went to a huge card system and pulled out a drawer labeled “TO.”  “But I recall it best by the steward whose philosophy and Irish turns of speech were so frequently quoted by the newspapers during the heydey of the establishment.  Can you recall his name?”

“I know whom you mean,” answered Pendleton, “but the name has slipped me.”

Ashton-Kirk paused in the fingering of the cards.

“It was Tobin,” said he.  “It came to me that it was, but I wanted to be sure.”  He pushed the drawer into place, looked at his friend inquiringly, and added:  “Suppose we go around to the ‘Rangnow’ and see him?”

CHAPTER XX

ONE OF THE OLD SORT

Pendleton looked at his friend in bewilderment.

“You don’t mean to say that the philosopher of the Coffin Club and this Tobin of young Morris’s are the same,” cried he.

“I only think they are,” said Ashton-Kirk quietly.  “But we can make sure by paying a short visit to the apartment house.”

“Now?”

“There is no time like the present.”

And so the end of a half hour found them stepping out of a cab at the extreme west end of the city.  It was only a little after nine o’clock, but the streets were almost deserted; the arc-lamps clicked and hissed lonesomely; rows of darkened windows and shadowy doorways ran away on both sides.

“There is the place we want,” said the investigator, pointing at an illuminated sign which hung out over the sidewalk some little distance away.

When they reached the place, they found it was rather a large building of the modern type; pushing open the swinging doors and making their way through a brilliantly lighted passage, they found themselves in an equally brilliant office.