Joseph Smith Fletcher

“ Naturally, therefore, I should like to know that man's name."
"You're not a detective?" suggested the landlord.
"Not at all!" replied Viner. "I was a neighbour of Mr. Ashton's, and I am interested—deeply interested—in an attempt to clear up the mystery of his death. Things keep coming out. I didn't know until this evening that Ashton spent some time here, at your house, the night he was killed. But when I got to know, I came along to make one or two inquiries."
"Bless me!" said the landlord, who was still staring at the portrait. "Yes, that's the gentleman, sure enough! ”

“ Yes," answered the landlord, with awakening interest. "Why, is it anything to do—"
Viner saw an illustrated paper lying on a side-table and caught it up. There was a portrait of Ashton in it, and he held it up before the landlord.
"Don't you recognize that?" he asked.
The landlord started and stared.
"Bless my life and soul!" he exclaimed. "Why, surely that's very like the gentleman I just referred to—I should say it was the very man!"
"It is the very man!" said Viner with emphasis, "the man for whom your customer who's just gone out left the envelope. ”

“ Remembering that Barleyfield had said that the man who now entered had been in Ashton's company in that very room on the evening of the murder, Viner looked at him with keen interest and speculation. He was a tall, well-built, clean-shaven man, of professional appearance and of a large, heavy, solemn face the evidently usual pallor of which was deepened by his black overcoat and cravat. An eminently respectable, slow-going, unimaginative man, in Viner's opinion, and of a type which one may see by the dozen in the precincts of the Temple ”