nning in to tell Mr.
Cotherstone that Kitely was lying dead on the Shawl. Of course we all
went up."

"Then--you've seen him?" demanded Mallalieu. "There's no doubt about
it?"

"Doubt!" exclaimed Bent. "I should think there is no doubt! As
determined a murder as ever I heard of. No--there's no doubt."

Mallalieu paused--at the gate of his own house.

"Come in, gentlemen," he said. "Come in just a minute, anyway. I--egad
it's struck me all of a heap, has that news! Murder?--there hasn't been
such a thing in these parts ever since I came here, near thirty years
ago. Come in and tell me a bit more about it."

He led the way up a gravelled drive, admitted himself and his visitors
to the house with a latchkey, and turned into a parlour where a fire
burned and a small supper-tray was set out on a table beneath a lamp.

"All my folks'll have gone to bed," he said. "They go and leave me a
bite of something, you see--I'm often out late. Will you gentlemen have
a sandwich--or a dry biscuit? Well, you'll have a drink, then. And so,"
he went on, as he produced glasses from the sideboard, "and so you were
spending the evening with Cotherstone, what?"

"Well, I can't say that we exactly spent all the evening with him,"
answered Bent, "because he had to go out for a good part of it, on
business. But we were with him--we were at his house--when the news
came."

"Aye, he had to go out, had he?" asked Mallalieu, as if from mere
curiosity. "What time would that be, like? I knew he'd business
tonight--business of ours."

"Nine to ten, roughly speaking," replied Bent. "He'd just got in when
Garthwaite came with the news."

"It 'ud shock him, of course," suggested Mallalieu. "His own tenant!"

"Yes--it was a shock," agreed Bent. He took the glass which his host
handed to him and sat down. "We'd better tell you all about it," he
said. "It's a queer affair--Mr. Brereton here, who's a barrister, thinks
it's a very queer affair."

Mallalieu nodded and sat down, too, glass in hand. He listened
attentively--and Brereton watched him while he listened. A sleek, sly,
observant, watchful man, this, said Brereton to himself--the sort that
would take all in and give little out. And he waited expectantly to hear
what Mallalieu would say when he had heard everything.

Mallalieu turned to him when Bent had finished.

"I agree with you, sir," he said. "Nobody but a fool would have cut that
piece of cord off, left it round the man's neck, a