red Tansley. "You'll have a hot old
time!"

"Used to 'em!" retorted Brent. "You forget I've been a press-man for
some years."

"But you didn't get that sort of thing?" suggested Tansley, half
incredulous.

Brent flicked the ash from his cigar and smiled.

"Don't go in for tall talk," he said lazily. "But it was I who tracked
down the defaulting directors of the Great Combined Amalgamation affair,
and ran to earth that chap who murdered his ward away up in
Northumberland, and found the Pembury absconding bank-manager who'd
scooted off so cleverly that the detectives couldn't trace even a smile
of him! Pretty stiff propositions, all those! And I reckon I can do my
bit here in this place, on Wallingford's lines, if I get the right to
intervene, as a townsman. That's what I want--_locus standi_."

"And when you've got it?" asked Tansley.

Brent worked his cigar into the corner of his firm lips and folding his
arms stared straight in front of him.

"Well," he said slowly, "I think I've fixed that in my own mind, fixed
it all out while the parson was putting him away in that old churchyard
this morning--I was thinking hard while he was reading his book. I
understand that by my cousin's death there's a vacancy in the Town
Council--he sat for some ward or other?"

"He sat for the Castle Ward, as Town Councillor," assented Tansley. "So
of course there's a vacancy."

"Well," continued Brent, "I reckon I'll put up for that vacancy. I'll be
Mr. Councillor Richard Brent!"

"You're a stranger, man!" laughed Tansley.

"I'll not be in a week's time," retorted Brent. "I'll be known to every
householder in that ward! But--this _locus standi_? If I bought real
estate in the town, I'd be a townsman, wouldn't I? A burgess, I reckon.
And then--why legally I'd be as much a Hathelsborough man as, say, Simon
Crood?"

Tansley took his hands out of his pockets and began to search amongst
his papers.

"Well, you're a go-ahead chap, Brent!" he said. "Evidently not the sort
to let grass grow under your feet. And if you want to buy a bit of nice
property I've the very goods for you. There's a client of mine, John
Chillingham, a retired tradesman, who wants to sell his house--he's
desirous of quitting this part of the country and going to live on the
South Coast. It's a delightful bit of property, just at the back of the
Castle, and it's therefore in the Castle Ward. Acacia Lodge, it's
called--nice, roomy, old-fashioned house, in spl