e, rock-bound cove, desolate and wild. Here one
was shut out from everything but the sea in front: Ravensdene Court
was no longer visible; here, amongst great masses of fallen cliff and
limpet-encrusted rock, round which the full strength of the tide was
washing, one seemed to be completely alone with sky and strand.

But the place was tenanted. I had not taken twenty paces along the
foot of the overhanging cliff before I pulled myself sharply to a
halt. There, on the sand before me, his face turned to the sky, his
arms helplessly stretched, lay Salter Quick. I knew he was dead in my
first horrified glance. And for the second time that morning, I saw
blood--red, vivid, staining the shining particles in the yellow,
sun-lighted beach.

CHAPTER IV

THE TOBACCO BOX

My first feeling of almost stupefied horror at seeing a man whom I had
met only the day before in the full tide of life and vigour lying
there in that lonely place, literally weltering in his own blood and
obviously the victim of a foul murder speedily changed to one of angry
curiosity. Who had wrought this crime? Crime it undoubtedly was--the
man's attitude, the trickle of blood from his slightly parted lips
across the stubble of his chin, the crimson stain on the sand at his
side, the whole attitude of his helpless figure, showed me that he had
been attacked from the rear and probably stricken down by a deadly
knife thrust through his shoulders. This was murder--black murder. And
my thoughts flew to what Claigue, the landlord, had said, warningly,
the previous afternoon, about the foolishness of showing so much gold.
Had Salter Quick disregarded that warning, flashed his money about in
some other public house, been followed to this out of the way spot and
run through the heart for the sake of his fistful of sovereigns? It
looked like it. But then that thought fled, and another took its
place--the recollection of the blood-stained linen, rag, bandage, or
handkerchief, which that queer man Mr. Cazalette had pushed into
hiding in the yew-hedge. Had that--had Cazalette himself--anything to
do with this crime?

The instinctive desire to get an answer to this last question made me
suddenly stoop down and lay my fingers on the dead man's open palm. I
was conscious as I did so of the extraordinary, appealing helplessness
of his hands--instead of being clenched in a death agony as I should
have expected they were stretched wide; they looked nerveless, lim