tand I had no idea he was the man we wanted; but as the
lift went down and my eyes were on the man's face, I saw who he was!
When he stood straight before me I had no more than a vague notion that
I'd seen him somewhere before. But down the lift went, and in the flash
of time when he'd nearly disappeared, and the bottom part of his face
was hidden by the sill of the lift opening--the part of his face where
his beard had been when we met him last--I saw it was Myatt!"

"Myatt? Good heavens!"

"Everard Myatt, Mr. Hewitt, the man that murdered Mr. Jacob Mason!
Everard Myatt, for a thousand, with his beard shaved! And we've lost him
again! What could we do? We shouted and ran downstairs, and that was
all. He'd gone, of course. And when we asked the hall porter he told us
that Mr. Catherton Hunt had just come down the lift and hurried out!"

THE CASE OF THE BURNT BARN

I

Everard Myatt--or Catherton Hunt--was lost again. Martin Hewitt had been
wholly successful, for he had recovered Mr. Bell's missing bonds; but
the police caught neither of the conspirators. Investigation at
Henning's lodgings showed that careful preparations must have been made
for an immediate flight if it should become necessary, and the flight
had taken place. The man in the hospital, who had been knocked down in
carrying from one to the other the extraordinary message that Hewitt
deciphered, remained insensible for a few days, and could not be
questioned till some time later still. Then he professed to have
forgotten all about the message on which he was going when he met his
accident, and the medical men in attendance informed the police that it
was quite possible that the fellow's statement was true. He said that he
_did_ carry messages sometimes, when he could get a job, but he could
remember nothing of the message of the key, nor of who had sent him, nor
where he was to go. Nevertheless, the police, although they professed
to accept his statement, kept a wary eye on him after his discharge from
the hospital, for they had a very great suspicion that he knew more than
he chose to tell. But nothing more was heard of the accomplices till
another case of Martin Hewitt's brought the news, and that in a manner
strange enough.

The matter began, as so many matters of Hewitt's did, with the receipt
of a telegram, followed immediately by another. For the first having
been handed in at a country office not very long before eight the
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