t have known, but what Stoner knew very well--the
figures were all of Cotherstone's making--clear, plain, well-formed
figures. And amongst them, and on the margins of the half-sheet, and
scrawled here and there, as if purposelessly and carelessly, was one
word in Cotherstone's handwriting, repeated over and over again. That
word was--_Wilchester_.

Stoner knew how that half-sheet of foolscap had come into his
possession. It was a half-sheet which he had found on Cotherstone's desk
when he went into the partners' private room to tidy things up on the
morning after the murder of Kitely. It lay there, carelessly tossed
aside amongst other papers of clearer meaning, and Stoner, after one
glance at it, had carefully folded it, placed it in his pocket, taken it
home, and locked it up, to be inspected at leisure.

He had had his reasons, of course, for this abstraction of a paper which
rightfully belonged to Cotherstone. Those reasons were a little
difficult to explain to himself in one way; easy enough to explain, in
another. As regards the difficulty, Stoner had somehow or other got a
vague idea, that evening of the murder, that something was wrong with
Cotherstone. He had noticed, or thought he noticed, a queer look on old
Kitely's face when the ex-detective left the private room--it was a look
of quiet satisfaction, or triumph, or malice; any way, said Stoner, it
was something. Then there was the fact of Cotherstone's curious
abstraction when he, Stoner, entered and found his employer sitting in
the darkness, long after Kitely had gone--Cotherstone had said he was
asleep, but Stoner knew that to be a fib. Altogether, Stoner had gained
a vague feeling, a curious intuition, that there was something queer,
not unconnected with the visit of Cotherstone's new tenant, and when he
heard, next morning, of what had befallen Kitely, all his suspicions
were renewed.

So much for the difficult reasons which had made him appropriate the
half-sheet of foolscap. But there was a reason which was not difficult.
It lay in the presence of that word _Wilchester_. If not of the finest
degree of intellect, Stoner was far from being a fool, and it had not
taken him very long to explain to himself why Cotherstone had scribbled
the name of that far-off south-country town all over that sheet of
paper, aimlessly, apparently without reason, amidst his figurings. _It
was uppermost in his thoughts at the time_--and as he sat there, pen in
hand, he h