mark at once, and
Brighton is not so prosperous a place that a man could sell a L70
cigar-case and forget all about it--that is, a second case, I mean. It's
most extraordinary."

"Rather! Make a magnificent story, Marley."

"Very," Marley responded, drily. "It would take all your well-known
ingenuity to get your hero out of this trouble."

Steel nodded gravely. This personal twist brought him to the earth again.
He could clearly see the trap into which he had placed himself. There
before him lay the cigar-case which he had positively identified as his
own; inside, his initials bore testimony to the fact. And yet the same
case had been identified beyond question as one sold by a highly
respectable local tradesman to the mysterious individual now lying in the
Sussex County Hospital.

"May I smoke a cigarette?" David asked.

"You may smoke a score if they will be of any assistance to you, sir,"
Marley replied. "I don't want to ask you any questions and I don't want
you--well, to commit yourself. But really, sir, you must admit--"

The inspector paused significantly. David nodded again.

"Pray proceed," he said: "speak from the brief you have before you."

"Well, you see it's this way," Marley said, not without hesitation. "You
call us up to your house, saying that a murder has been committed there;
we find a stranger almost at his last gasp in your conservatory with
every signs of a struggle having taken place. You tell us that the
injured man is a stranger to you; you go on to say that he must have
found his way into your house during a nocturnal ramble of yours. Well,
that sounds like common sense on the face of it. The criminal has studied
your habits and has taken advantage of them. Then I ask if you are in the
habit of taking these midnight strolls, and with some signs of hesitation
you say that you have never done such a thing before. Charles Dickens was
very fond of that kind of thing, and I naturally imagined that you had
the same fancy. But you had never done it before. And, the only time, a
man is nearly murdered in your house."

"Perfectly correct," David murmured. "Gaboriau could not have put it
better. You might have been a pupil of my remarkable acquaintance
Hatherly Bell."

"I am a pupil of Mr. Bell's," Marley said, quietly. "Seven years ago he
induced me to leave the Huddersfield police to go into his office, where
I stayed until Mr. Bell gave up business, when I applied for and gained
my presen