dicated a good deal.

"That settles one point and seems to establish another," he remarked
significantly. "Salter Quick was not murdered by somebody who had come
into these parts on the same errand as himself. He was murdered by
somebody who was--here already!"

"And who met him?" I suggested.

"And who met him," assented the inspector. "And now I'm more anxious
than ever to know if there is anything in that tobacco-box theory of
Mr. Cazalette's. Couldn't you young people cajole Mr. Cazalette into
telling you a little? Surely he would oblige you, Miss Raven?"

"There are moments when Mr. Cazalette is approachable," replied Miss
Raven. "There are others at which I should as soon think of asking a
question of the Sphinx."

"Wait!" said I. "Mr. Cazalette, I firmly believe, knows something. And
now--you know more than you did. One mystery has gone by the board."

"It leaves the main one all the blacker," answered the inspector.
"Who, of all the folk in these parts, is one to suspect? Yet--it would
seem that Salter Quick found somebody here to whom his presence was so
decidedly unwelcome that there was nothing for it but--swift and
certain death! Why? Well--death ensures silence."

Miss Raven and I took our leave for the second time. We walked some
distance from the police-station before exchanging a word: I do not
know what she was thinking of; as for myself, I was speculating on the
change in my opinion brought about by the rough-and-ready statement of
the brusque Yorkshireman. For until then I had firmly believed that
the man who had accosted our friend of the Mariner's Joy, Jim
Gelthwaite, the drover, was the man who had murdered Salter Quick. My
notion was that this man, whoever he was, had foregathered somewhere
with Quick, that they were known to each other, and had a common
object, and that he had knifed Quick for purposes of his own. And now
that idea was exploded, and so far as I could see, the search for the
real assassin was yet to begin.

Suddenly Miss Raven spoke.

"I suppose it's scarcely possible that the murderer was present at
that inquest?" she asked, half-timidly, as if afraid of my ridiculing
her suggestion.

"Quite possible," said I. "The place was packed to the doors with all
sorts of people. But why?"

"I thought perhaps that he might have contrived to abstract that
tobacco-box, knowing that as long as it was in the hands of the police
there might be some clue to his identity," she sugge