J. S. Fletcher

“ The telegram quoted by Gaffkin was, in Brixey's opinion, a fraud, and, as he had said, a clumsy one, and a feature in what he was rapidly coming to consider a strange and mysterious conspiracy. It had been sent to him as a blind, in his uncle’s name, in order to throw him off a possible scent.
Yet there were certain facts to be faced, and Brixey put these to himself in the form of questions, revolving each in turn as the tram carried him along the Sussex coast line. Some person who was not Mr. Linthwaite had send the message which Gaffkin had found on arriving in London. ”

“ Brixey went off to the hotel. He was on the track of something, and of somebody; the next thing was to discover who the person was who had come to Newhaven in order to send that designedly misleading message. Would the hotel folk, who no doubt saw a great many people, be likely to remember any particular person who had been there, perhaps only for a few minutes, two days before? ”

“ Brixey left the train at Newhaven town station and walked up to the post office. He had to wait some little time before the clerk was found who had taken in the telegram about which he had called, but thereafter he had no difficulty in getting his first piece of information. The telegram had not been handed in over the counter at all, but telephoned from an hotel in the town.
"Man's voice or woman's?" asked Brixey. ”