r
Gilbert Carstairs, and what had been a mystery was one no longer.

I went back to the dock where I had left the tramp-steamer, and told its
good-natured skipper what I had done, for he was as much interested in
the affair as if he had been my own brother. And that accomplished, I
left him again and went sight-seeing, having been wonderfully freshened
up and restored by my good sleep of the morning. I wandered up and down
and about Dundee till I was leg-weary, and it was nearly six o'clock of
the afternoon. And at that time, being in Bank Street, and looking about
me for some place where I could get a cup of tea and a bite of food, I
chanced by sheer accident to see a name on a brass plate, fixed amongst
more of the same sort, on the outer door of a suite of offices. That name
was Gavin Smeaton. I recalled it at once--and, moved by a sudden impulse,
I went climbing up a lot of steps to Mr. Gavin Smeaton's office.

CHAPTER XXI

MR. GAVIN SMEATON

I walked into a room right at the top of the building, wherein a young
man of thirty or thereabouts was sitting at a desk, putting together a
quantity of letters which a lad, standing at his side, was evidently
about to carry to the post. He was a good-looking, alert, businesslike
sort of young man this, of a superior type of countenance, very well
dressed, and altogether a noticeable person. What first struck me about
him was, that though he gave me a quick glance when, having first tapped
at his door and walked inside his office, I stood there confronting him,
he finished his immediate concern before giving me any further attention.
It was not until he had given all the letters to the lad and bade him
hurry off to the post, that he turned to me with another sharp look and
one word of interrogation.

"Yes?" he said.

"Mr. Gavin Smeaton?" asked I.

"That's my name," he answered. "What can I do for you?"

Up to that moment I had not the least idea as to the exact reasons which
had led me to climb those stairs. The truth was I had acted on impulse.
And now that I was actually in the presence of a man who was obviously a
very businesslike and matter-of-fact sort of person, I felt awkward and
tongue-tied. He was looking me over all the time as if there was a wonder
in his mind about me, and when I was slow in answering he stirred a bit
impatiently in his chair.

"My business hours are over for the day," he said. "If it's business--"

"It's not business in the or