htn't find out--any little detail is of value in a case of
this sort."

The inspector picked up the metal tobacco-box from where it lay amidst
Quick's belongings and looked inside the lid. It was very plain that
he saw nothing there but some--to him meaningless scratches and he put
the thing into Mr. Cazalette's hands with an air of indifference.

"I see no objection," he said. "Let's have it back when you've done
with it. We shall have to exhibit these personal properties before the
coroner."

Mr. Cazalette carried his camera and the tobacco-box outside the shed
in which the dead man's body lay and began to be busy. A gardener's
potting-table stood against the wall; on this, backed by a black
cloth which he had brought from the house, he set up the box and
prepared to photograph it. It was evident that he attached great
importance to what he was doing.

"I shall take two or three negatives of this, Middlebrook," he
observed, consequentially. "I'm an expert in photography, and I've got
an enlarging apparatus in my room. Before the day's out, I shall show
you something."

Personally, I had seen no more in the inner lid of the tobacco-box
than the inspector seemed to have seen--a few lines and scratches,
probably caused by thumb or finger-nail--and I left Mr. Cazalette to
his self-imposed labours and rejoined the doctors and the police who
were discussing the next thing to be done. That Quick had been
murdered there was no doubt; there would have to be an inquest, of
course, and for that purpose his body would have to be removed to the
nearest inn, a house on the cross-roads just beyond Ravensdene Court;
search would have to be set up at once for suspicious characters, and
Noah Quick, of Devonport, would have to be communicated with.

All this the police took in hand, and I saw that Mr. Raven was
heartily relieved when he heard that the dead man would be removed
from his premises and that the inquest would not be held there. Ever
since I had first broken the news to him, he had been upset and
nervous: I could see that he was one of those men who dislike fuss and
publicity. He looked at me with a sort of commiseration when the
police questioned me closely about my knowledge of Salter Quick's
movements on the previous day, and especially about his visit to the
Mariner's Joy.

"Yet," said I, finishing my account of that episode, "it is very
evident that the man was not murdered for the sake of robbery, seeing
that