turned to the lean-to shed at the end of
the cottage. A tiled verandah ran along the front of cottage and shed,
and the door of the shed was at its further end. But as the sergeant was
about to open it, the policeman of the observant nature made his third
discovery. He had been flashing the light of his bull's-eye lamp over
his surroundings, and he now turned it on a coil of rope which hung from
a nail in the boarded wall of the shed, between the door and the window.

"There you are, gentlemen!" he said, lifting the lamp in one hand and
pointing triumphantly to a definite point of the coiled cord with the
index finger of the other. "There! Cut clean, too--just like the bit up
yonder!"

Brereton pressed forward and looked narrowly at what the man was
indicating. There was no doubt that a length of cord had been freshly
cut off the coil, and cut, too, with an unusually sharp, keen-bladed
knife; the edges of the severance were clean and distinct, the separated
strands were fresh and unsoiled. It was obvious that a piece of that
cord had been cut from the rest within a very short time, and the
sergeant shook his head gravely as he took the coil down from its nail.

"I don't think there's any need to look round much further, Mr. Bent,"
he said. "Of course, I shall take this away with me, and compare it with
the shorter piece. But we'll just peep into this shed, so as to make
his daughter believe that was what we wanted: I don't want to frighten
her more than we have done. Naught there, you see," he went on, opening
the shed door and revealing a whitewashed interior furnished with
fittings and articles of its owner's trade. "Well, we'll away--with what
we've got."

He went back to the door of the cottage and putting his head inside
called gently to its occupant.

"Well?" demanded Avice.

"All right, miss--we're going," said the sergeant. "But if your father
comes in, just ask him to step down to the police-station, d'you see?--I
should like to have a word or two with him."

The girl made no answer to this gentle request, and when the sergeant
had joined the others, she shut the door of the cottage, and Brereton
heard it locked and bolted.

"That's about the strangest thing of all!" he said as he and Bent left
the policemen and turned down a by-lane which led towards the town. "I
haven't a doubt that the piece of cord with which Kitely was strangled
was cut off that coil! Now what does it mean? Of course, to me it's t