get speech with this Mr. Gilverthwaite of yours--for, if he knows no
more, he'll know who yon man is!"

I made no answer to that. I had no certain answer to make. I was already
wondering about a lot of conjectures. Would Mr. Gilverthwaite know who
the man was? Was he the man I ought to have met? Or had that man been
there, witnessed the murder, and gone away, frightened to stop where the
murder had been done? Or--yet again--was this some man who had come upon
Mr. Gilverthwaite's correspondent, and, for some reason, been murdered
by him? It was, however, all beyond me just then, and presently the
sergeant and I were on our machines and making for Berwick. But we had
not been set out half an hour, and were only just where we could see
the town's lights before us in the night, when two folk came riding
bicycles through the mist that lay thick in a dip of the road, and,
calling to me, let me know that they were Maisie Dunlop and her brother
Tom that she had made to come with her, and in another minute Maisie and
I were whispering together.

"It's all right now that I know you're safe, Hugh," she said
breathlessly. "But you must get back with me quickly. Yon lodger of yours
is dead, and your mother in a fine way, wondering where you are!"




CHAPTER V

THE BRASS-BOUND CHEST