inning to suspect that Crone had played some game with me, and
had not told me anything like the truth during our conversation. There
had been more within his knowledge than he had let out--but what was it?
And I could not help feeling that his object in setting off in that
direction, immediately after I had left him, might have been, not
poaching, but somebody to whom he wished to communicate the result of his
talk with me. And, in that case, who was the somebody?

But just then I had to leave my own thoughts and speculations alone, and
to attend to what was going on between my principal and Nance Maguire.
Mr. Lindsey, however, appeared to be satisfied with what he had heard. He
gave the woman some further advice about keeping her tongue still, told
her what to do as regards Crone's effects, and left the cottage. And when
we were out in the main street again on our way back to the office he
turned to me with a look of decision.

"I've come to a definite theory about this affair, Hugh," he said. "And
I'll lay a fiver to a farthing that it's the right one!"

"Yes, Mr. Lindsey?" said I, keenly interested at hearing that.

"Crone knew who killed Phillips," he said. "And the man who killed
Phillips killed Crone, too, because Crone knew! That's been the way of
it, my lad! And now, then, who's the man?"

I could make no reply to such a question, and presently he went
on--talking as much to himself, I think, as to me.

"I wish I knew certain things!" he muttered. "I wish I knew what Phillips
and Gilverthwaite came here for. I wish I knew if Gilverthwaite ever had
any secret dealings with Crone. I wish--I do wish!--I knew if there has
been--if there is--a third man in this Phillips-Gilverthwaite affair who
has managed, and is managing, to keep himself in the background.
But--I'll stake my professional reputation on one thing--whoever killed
Phillips, killed Abel Crone! It's all of a piece."

Now, of course I know now--have known for many a year--that it was at
this exact juncture that I made a fatal, a reprehensible mistake in my
share of all this business. It was there, at that exact point, that I
ought to have made a clean breast to Mr. Lindsey of everything that I
knew. I ought to have told him, there and then, of what I had seen at the
cross-roads that night of the murder of Phillips; and of my conversation
about that with Abel Crone at his shop; and of my visit to Sir Gilbert
Carstairs at Hathercleugh House. Had I do