"

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

The police-sergeant had got off his bicycle at the same time that I
jumped from mine, and he was close behind me when Maisie and I met, and I
heard him give a sharp whistle at her news. And as for me, I was
dumbfounded, for though I had seen well enough that Mr. Gilverthwaite was
very ill when I left him, I was certainly a long way from thinking him
like to die. Indeed, I was so astonished that all I could do was to stand
staring at Maisie in the grey light which was just coming between the
midnight and the morning. But the sergeant found his tongue more readily.

"I suppose he died in his bed, miss?" he asked softly. "Mr. Hugh here
said he was ill; it would be a turn for the worse, no doubt, after Mr.
Hugh left him?"

"He died suddenly just after eleven o'clock," answered Maisie; "and your
mother sought you at Mr. Lindsey's office, Hugh, and when she found you
weren't there, she came down to our house, and I had to tell her that
you'd come out this way on an errand for Mr. Gilverthwaite. And I told
her, too, what I wasn't so sure of myself, that there'd no harm come to
you of it, and that you'd be back soon after twelve, and I went down to
your house and waited with her; and when you didn't come, and didn't
come, why, I got Tom here to ge