y. "You're in possession
of some evidence that we know nothing about?"

"I know this--and I'll make you a present of it, now," answered Mr.
Lindsey. "As you're aware, I'm a bit of a mountaineer--you know that
I've spent a good many of my holidays in Switzerland, climbing.
Consequently, I know what alpenstocks and ice-axes are. And when I came
to reflect on the circumstances of Crone's murder, I remember that not so
long since, happening to be out along the riverside, I chanced across Sir
Gilbert Carstairs using a very late type of ice-ax as a walking-stick--as
he well could do, and might have picked up in his hall as some men'll
pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself,
hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at
home--and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked
him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of
it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I
wanted to see if he would catch what I was after!"

"And--you think he did?" asked the superintendent, eagerly.

"I kept the corner of an eye on him," answered Mr. Lindsey, knowingly.
"He saw what I was after! He's a clever fellow, that--but he took the
mask off his face for the thousandth part of a second. I saw!"

The two listeners were so amazed by this that they sat in silence for a
while, staring at Mr. Lindsey with open-mouthed amazement.

"It's a dark, dark business!" sighed Murray at last. "What's the true
meaning of it, do you think, Mr. Lindsey?"

"Some secret that's being gradually got at," replied Mr. Lindsey,
promptly. "That's what it is. And there's nothing to do, just now, but
wait until somebody comes from Holmshaw and Portlethorpe's. Holmshaw is
an old man--probably Portlethorpe himself will come along. He may know
something--they've been family solicitors to the Carstairs lot for many a
year. But it's my impression that Sir Gilbert Carstairs is away!--and
that his wife's after him. And if you want to be doing something, try to
find out where she went on her bicycle yesterday--likely, she rode to
some station in the neighbourhood, and then took train."

Mr. Lindsey and I then went to the office, and we had not been there long
when a telegram arrived from Newcastle. Mr. Portlethorpe himself was
coming on to Berwick immediately. And in the middle of the afternoon he
arrived--a middle-aged, somewhat nervous-mannered man,