ted the cycle and rode
off."

"Towards Norwich?"

"Yes, sir--in that direction."

The grey-faced man at the back of the room was now all attention. Upon
his countenance was a curious, intense look. The coroner noticed him,
and became puzzled, even suspicious. Nobody knew the man or why he was
present. Yet to him the death of Richard Harborne was, without a doubt,
of the very greatest concern.

More than once the coroner looked suddenly up from writing the
depositions, regarding him with covert glances. Though he had all the
appearance of a gentleman, yet there was about him a strange, almost
imperceptible air of the adventurer. A close observer would have noticed
that his clothes bore the cut of a foreign tailor--French or
Italian--and his boots were too long and pointed to be English. His
well-kept, white hands were the hands of a foreigner, long and pointed,
with nails trimmed to points, and upon his left wrist, concealed by his
round shirt-cuff secured by solitaires in place of links, he wore a gold
bangle which inside bore an inscription.

At times his grey, hard face was impassive and sphinx-like, yet to the
narrative of how Richard Harborne was discovered he listened with a rapt
attention it was impossible to conceal.

Yes, the coroner himself decided that there was an air of mystery
surrounding the stranger, and resolved to tell the police at the
conclusion of the inquiry.

Superintendent Bennet, in answer to further questions put by the
coroner, said:

"At Gordon's Farm, to which we carried the body, I searched the dead
man's pockets. From the Foreign Office passport I found, I learned the
name of the gentleman, and from some letters addressed to him at the
King's Head, at Beccles, I was soon able to ascertain by telephone that
he had been stopping there for some little time. Most of the letters
were private ones, but two of them were enclosed in double envelopes,
and written on plain paper without any address or any signature. They
were written in the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet. A post-office
telegraphist has seen them, and says that the letters are a jumble and
form no words, therefore they must be secret correspondence in code."

And he handed the two letters in question to the coroner, who examined
them with considerable curiosity, while the stranger at the back of the
court folded his arms suddenly and looked entirely unconcerned.

"I also found this," the superintendent went on, han