injured man is a stranger to you; you go on to say that he must have
found his way into your house during a nocturnal ramble of yours. Well,
that sounds like common sense on the face of it. The criminal has studied
your habits and has taken advantage of them. Then I ask if you are in the
habit of taking these midnight strolls, and with some signs of hesitation
you say that you have never done such a thing before. Charles Dickens was
very fond of that kind of thing, and I naturally imagined that you had
the same fancy. But you had never done it before. And, the only time, a
man is nearly murdered in your house."

"Perfectly correct," David murmured. "Gaboriau could not have put it
better. You might have been a pupil of my remarkable acquaintance
Hatherly Bell."

"I am a pupil of Mr. Bell's," Marley said, quietly. "Seven years ago he
induced me to leave the Huddersfield police to go into his office, where
I stayed until Mr. Bell gave up business, when I applied for and gained
my present position. Curious you should mention Mr. Bell's name, seeing
that he was here so recently as this afternoon."

"Staying in Brighton?" Steel asked, eagerly. "What is his address?"

"No. 219, Brunswick Square."

It took all the nerve that David possessed to crush the cry that rose to
his lips. It was more than strange that the man he most desired to see at
this juncture should be staying in the very house where the novelist had
his great adventure. And in the mere fact might be the key to the problem
of the cigar-case.