ll drunk, still he'd had a skinful, and he
was in there again, and they wouldn't serve him, and he was getting
quarrelsome and abusive, and in the middle of it had pulled out a purse
that another man who was in there vowed and declared, aside, to
Macfarlane, was Abel Crone's. So I got a couple of constables and went
back with Macfarlane, and there was the man vowing he'd be served, and
with a handful of money to prove that he could pay for whatever he
called for. And as he began to turn ugly, and show fight, we just clapped
the bracelets on him and brought him along, and there he is in the
cells--and, of course, it's sobered him down, and he's demanding his
rights to see a lawyer."

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Lindsey.

"A stranger to the town," replied Chisholm. "And he'll neither give name
nor address but to a lawyer, he declares. But we know he was staying at
one of the common lodging-houses--Watson's--three nights ago, and that
the last two nights he wasn't in there at all."

"Well--where's that purse?" demanded Mr. Lindsey. "Mr. Moneylaws here
says he can identify it, if it's Crone's."

Chisholm opened a drawer and took out what I at once knew to be Abel
Crone's purse--which was in reality a sort of old pocket-book or wallet,
of some sort of skin, with a good deal of the original hair left on it,
and tied about with a bit of old bootlace. There were both gold and
silver in it--just as I had seen when Crone pulled it out to find me some
change for a five-shilling piece I had given him--and more by token,
there was the five-shilling piece itself!

"That's Crone's purse!" I exclaimed. "I've no doubt about that. And
that's a crown piece I gave him myself; I've no doubt about that either!"

"Let us see the man," said Mr. Lindsey.

Chisholm led us down a corridor to the cells, and unlocked a door. He
stepped within the cell behind it, motioning us to follow. And there, on
the one stool which the place contained, sat a big, hulking fellow that
looked like a navvy, whose rough clothes bore evidence of his having
slept out in them, and whose boots were stained with the mud and clay
which they would be likely to collect along the riverside. He was sitting
nursing his head in his hands, growling to himself, and he looked up at
us as I have seen wild beasts look out through the bars of cages. And
somehow, there was that in the man's eyes which made me think, there and
then, that he was not reflecting on any murder that he ha