ognised me in an instant, and hurried on towards Piccadilly Circus.
It was Dick--of that I'm absolutely convinced. I had a cocktail with him
in the club next day, but he never referred to the incident."

"If he had retired from the Navy, then what was his business, do you
suppose?"

"Haven't the slightest idea," Barclay replied. "I met him here with
a motor-bike late yesterday afternoon. We had a drink together across
at the Grand, against the sea, and I left him just after five o'clock.
I had the hydroplane out and went up from opposite the coastguard
station," he said, pointing to the small, well-kept grass plot on
the left, where stood the flagstaff and the white cottages of the
coastguard. "He watched me get up, and then, I suppose, he started off
on his bike for Norwich. What happened afterwards is entirely shrouded
in mystery. He was seen to pass through the market-place of North
Walsham, five miles away, and an hour and a quarter later he was found,
only three miles farther on, at a lonely spot near the junction of the
Norwich road and that leading up to Worstead Station, between Westwick
and Fairstead. A carter found him lying in a ditch at the roadside,
stabbed in the throat, while his motor-cycle was missing!"

"From the papers this morning it appears that your friend has been about
this neighbourhood a good deal of late. For what reason nobody knows.
He's been living sometimes at the Royal at Norwich and the King's Head
at Beccles for the past month or so, they say."

"He told me so himself. He promised to come over to me at the
air-station at Yarmouth to-morrow and lunch with me, poor fellow."

"I wonder what really happened?"

"Ah, I wonder!" remarked the slim, well-set-up, flying officer. "A mere
tramp doesn't kill a fellow of Dick Harborne's hard stamp in order to
rob him of his cycle."

"No. There's something much more behind the tragedy, without a doubt,"
declared the local Justice of the Peace. "Let's hope something will come
out at the inquest. Personally, I'm inclined to think that it's an act
of revenge. Most probably a woman is at the bottom of it."

Barclay shook his head. He did not incline to that opinion.

"I wonder with what motive he cycled so constantly over to this
neighbourhood from Norwich or Beccles?" exclaimed Goring. "What could
have been the attraction? There must have been one, for this is an
out-of-the-world place."

"Your theory is a woman. Mine isn't," declared the lieu