er to regain possession of
it."

"You are worthier of the chief constable's compliment than I, my dear
Galloway," said Colwyn genially. "Your gift of overcoming points which
tell against you by ignoring them, and your careful avoidance of
tell-tale inferences, would make you an ideal Crown Prosecutor."

"I don't believe in inferences in crime," replied Galloway, flushing
under the detective's sarcasm. "I am a plain man, and I like to stick to
facts."

"What was the whole of your case against Penreath but a series of
inferences?" retorted Colwyn. "Circumstantial evidence, and the
circumstances on which you depended in this case, were never fully
established. Furthermore, your facts were not consistent with your
original hypothesis, and had to be altered when the case went to trial.
Now that I have discovered other facts and inferences which are
consistent with another hypothesis, you strive to shut your eyes to
them, or draw wrong conclusions from them. Your suggestion that Penreath
must have hidden the money in the pit because he was arrested near it is
a choice example of false deduction based on the wrong premise that
Penreath hid the money there on the night of the murder. He could not
have done so because he had no rope, and how was he, a stranger to the
place, to know that the inside of the pit was covered with creeping
plants of sufficient strength to bear a man's weight? The choice of the
pit as a hiding place for the money argues an intimate local knowledge."

"You have not yet told us how you came to deduce that the money was in
the pit," said Mr. Cromering, who had been examining the pocket-book and
money.

"While I was examining the mouth of the pit the previous afternoon I
found this piece of paper at the brink, trodden into the clay. Later on
I recognised the peculiar watermark of waving lines as the Government
watermark in the first issue of Treasury war notes. From that I deduced
that the money was hidden in the pit. It was all in Treasury notes, as
you see."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you now," said the chief constable,
with a puzzled glance at the piece of dirty paper in his hand. "This
piece of paper is not a Treasury note."

"Not now, perhaps, but it was once," said the detective with a smile.
"It puzzled me at first. I could not account for the Treasury watermark,
designed to prevent forgery of the notes, appearing on a piece of blank
paper. Then it came to me. The first issue of Trea