Confine him to his room at his hotel, with two
or three of your men to watch him. I will dress and come there as
quickly as I can."
Half an hour later I was in a grubby room of a grubby hotel, where
a short, sallow, thickset man, with three recent cuts on his face,
was walking up and down, smoking cigarettes feverishly, and
throwing frightened glances at three sinister-looking plain-
clothes men, who pretended to be quite at ease. I looked again at
the description and at the man. There could be no doubt about it.
I asked him for his own account of himself. He told me that he was
the Manager of the Gothenburg Tramway Company in Sweden, an
English concern, and that he had come to Russia for a little
holiday. He accounted for the cuts on his face and hands by saying
that he had slipped and fallen on his face whilst alighting from a
moving tram-car. He declared that he was well known in Stockholm,
and that his wife, when packing his things, must have put in the
revolver and dagger without his knowledge. It all sounded
grotesquely improbable, but I promised to telegraph both to
Stockholm and Gothenburg, and to return to him as soon as I had
received the answers.
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