?"

"Yes. He was in the neighbourhood accidentally. He called last night. I
told him and he was glad that I had sent for you. He is over there, on
the other side of the churchyard. Oh, please will you go to him? Captain
Morford is within easy call and has agreed to come when he is wanted. Do
go, do go quickly, Mr. Cleek. There's someone coming up the road and I
am horribly frightened."

"But why? It is merely a farm labourer," said Cleek, glancing through
the open side of the lich-gate and down the road. "You can see that for
yourself."

"Yes, but--who knows? who can tell? There is no clue to the actual
person and he is so cunning, so crafty--Oh, please, will you go?
Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again. To-day I am too
frightened to stay."

He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would
be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more
word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the
green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope
beyond until he came to the extreme other side. And there in the shade
of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with
his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and
expectantly awaiting him.

"My dear fellow, I never was so glad," he said, tossing away his smoke
and jumping up as Cleek appeared. "Happy coincidence my motoring down
here--eh, what? Wife in these parts visiting. Rum, my turning up just
after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed,
wasn't it?"

"Very," said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full
length upon the ground. "Would as soon have expected to run foul of a
specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the
neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square. Well, what's it now, Mr. Narkom?--I'm
told you know the details. A match please, if you have one. Thanks very
much. Now then let's have the facts. What sort of a case is it?"

"The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have
ever handled," replied the Superintendent, impressively. "It's a
murder--three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in
the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it
isn't pulled up sharp and his amazing _modus operandi_ discovered.

"The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original
in its methods of procedure, so complex, so wei