idea as to the nature of his work?" Inspector
Jacks asked.

"Bless you, no!" Mr. Coulson replied, brushing his hair vigorously. "It
never entered into my head to ask him, and I never heard him mention it.
I only know that he was a quiet-living, decent sort of a chap, but, as I
put it to our young friend the newspaper man, he was a crank."

The Inspector was disappointed. He began to feel that he was wasting his
time.

"Did you know anything of the object of his journey to Europe?" he
asked.

"Nary a thing," Mr. Coulson declared. "He only came on deck once or
twice, and he had scarcely a civil word even for me. Why, I tell
you, sir," Mr. Coulson continued, "if he saw me coming along on the
promenade, he'd turn round and go the other way, for fear I'd ask him to
come and have a drink. A c-r-a-n-k, sir! You write it down at that, and
you won't be far out."

"He certainly seems to have been a queer lot," the Inspector declared.
"By the bye," he continued, "you said something, I believe, about his
having had more money with him than was found upon his person."

"That's so," Mr. Coulson admitted. "I know he deposited a pocketbook
with the purser, and I happened to be standing by when he received it
back. I noticed that he had three or four thousand-dollar bills, and
there didn't seem to be anything of the sort upon him when he was
found."

The Inspector made a note of this.

"You believe yourself, then, Mr. Coulson," he said, closing his
pocketbook, "that the murder was committed for the purpose of robbery?"

"Seems to me it's common sense," Mr. Coulson replied. "A man who goes
and takes a special train to London from the docks of a city like
Liverpool--a city filled with the scum of the world, mind you--kind of
gives himself away as a man worth robbing, doesn't he?"

The Inspector nodded.

"That's sensible talk, Mr. Coulson," he acknowledged. "You never heard,
I suppose, of his having had a quarrel with any one?"

"Never in my life," Mr. Coulson declared. "He wasn't the sort to make
enemies, any more than he was the sort to make friends."

The Inspector took up his hat. His manner now was no longer
inquisitorial. With the closing of his notebook a new geniality had
taken the place of his official stiffness.

"You are making a long stay here, Mr. Coulson?" he asked.

"A week or so, maybe," that gentleman answered. "I am in the machinery
patent line--machinery for the manufacture of woollen goods mostly--an