blood. A smear of
blood--as if somebody had wiped blood off his fingers, you'll
understand. But it was not that, not the blood, made me give my
particular attention to the thing, which I'd picked off with my thumb
and finger. It was that I saw at once that this was no common man's
property, for there was a crest woven into one corner, and a monogram
of initials underneath it, and the stuff itself was a sort that I'm
unfamiliar with--it wasn't linen, though it looked like it, and it
wasn't silk, for I'm well acquainted with that fabric--maybe it was a
mixture of the two, but it had not been woven or made in any British
factory: the thing, Middlebrook, was of foreign origin."

"What were the markings you speak of?" I asked.

"Well, I tell you there was a crest; anyhow it was a coronet, or that
make of a thing," he answered. "Woven in one corner--I mean worked in
by hand. And the letters beneath it were a V and a de--small, that
last--and a C. Man! that handkerchief was the property of some man of
quality! And the stains being wet--the mud-stains, at any rate, though
the smear of blood was dry--I gathered that it had been but recently
deposited, by accident, where I found it. I reckoned it up this way,
d'ye see, Middlebrook--the man who'd left it there had used it on the
beach--maybe he'd cut his toe, bathing, or something o' that sort, or
likely a cut finger, gathering a shell or a fossil--and had thrust it
carelessly into a side-pocket, for a thorn to catch hold of as he
passed. But there it was, and there I found it."

"And what did you do with it, Mr. Cazalette?" I inquired with seeming
innocence.

"I'm telling you," he replied. "I had no knowledge, you're aware, of
what lay behind me on the sands: I just thought it a queer thing that
a man of quality's handkerchief should be there. And I slipped it
among my towels, to bring along wi' me to the house here. But I'm
whiles given to absent-mindedness, and not liking that I should put
the blood-stained thing down on my dressing-table there and cause the
maids to wonder, I thrust it into a hedge as I was passing along, till
I could go back and examine it at my leisure. And when I'd got myself
dressed, I went back and took it, and put it in a stout envelope into
my pocket--and then you came along, Middlebrook, with your story of
the murder, and I saw then that before saying a word to anybody, I'd
keep my own counsel and examine that thing more carefully. And man
alive!