nearer at home were
constantly bringing him across the track of Frank Merrill. It was as
though fate had conspired to show the boy in the blackest light. Frank
had been acting as secretary to his uncle, and then Jasper Cole had
suddenly appeared upon the scene from nowhere in particular. The
suggestion had been made somewhat vaguely that he had come from
"abroad," and it was certain that he arrived as a result of long
negotiations which John Minute himself had conducted. They were
negotiations which involved months of correspondence, no letter of which
either from one or the other had Frank seen.

While the trial was pending, the little man collected quite a volume of
information, both from Frank and the girl, but nothing had been quite as
inexplicable as this intrusion of Jasper Cole upon the scene, or the
extraordinary mystery which John Minute had made of his engagement.

He had written and posted all the letters to Jasper himself, and had
apparently received the replies, which he had burned, at some other
address of which Frank was ignorant.

Jasper had come, and then one day there had been a quarrel, not between
the two young men, but between Frank and his uncle. It was a singularly
bitter quarrel, and again Frank refused to discuss the cause. He left
the impression upon Saul Arthur's mind that he had to some extent been
responsible. And here was another fact which puzzled "The Man Who Knew."
Sergeant Smith, as he was then, had been to some extent responsible. It
was Frank who had introduced the sergeant to Eastbourne and brought him
to his uncle. But this was only one aspect of the mystery. There were
others as obscure.

Saul Arthur Mann went back to his bureau, and for the twentieth time
gathered the considerable dossiers he had accumulated relating to the
case and to the characters, and went through them systematically and
carefully.

He left his office near midnight, but at nine o'clock the next morning
was on his way to Eastbourne. Constable Wiseman was, by good fortune,
enjoying a day's holiday, and was at work in his kitchen garden when Mr.
Mann's car pulled up before the cottage. Wiseman received his visitor
importantly, for, though the constable's prestige was regarded in
official circles as having diminished as a result of the trial, it was
felt by the villagers that their policeman, if he had not solved the
mystery of John Minute's death, had at least gone a long way to its
solution.

In the spo