ed
for dinner, and I was going downstairs, Mr. Cazalette's door opened
and he quietly drew me inside his room.

"Middlebrook!" he whispered--though he had carefully shut the
door--"you're a sensible lad, and I'll acquaint you with a matter.
This very morning, as I was taking my bit of a dip, my pocket-book was
stolen out of the jacket that I'd left on the shore. Stolen,
Middlebrook!"

"Was there anything of great value in it?" I asked.

"Aye, there was!" answered Mr. Cazalette. "There was that in it which,
in my opinion, might be some sort of a clue to the real truth about
yon man's murder!"

CHAPTER IX

THE ENLARGED PHOTOGRAPH

I was dimly conscious, in a vague, uncertain fashion, that Mr.
Cazalette was going to tell me secrets; that I was about to hear
something which would explain his own somewhat mysterious doings on
the morning of the murder; a half-excited, anticipating curiosity rose
in me. I think he saw it, for he signed to me to sit down in an easy
chair close by his bed; he himself, a queer, odd figure in his quaint,
old-fashioned clothes, perched himself on the edge of the bed.

"Sit you down, Middlebrook," he said. "We've some time yet before
dinner, and I'm wanting to talk to you--in private, you'll bear in
mind. There's things I know that I'm not willing--as yet--to tell to
everybody. But I'll tell them to you, Middlebrook--for you're a
sensible young fellow, and we'll take a bit of counsel together.
Aye--there was that in my pocket-book that might be--I'll not say
positively that it was, but that it might be--a clue to the identity
of the man that murdered yon Salter Quick, and I'm sorry now that I've
lost it and didn't take more care of it. But man! who'd ha' thought
that I'd have my pocket-book stolen from under my very nose! And
that's a convincing proof that there's uncommonly sharp and clever
criminals around us in these parts, Middlebrook."

"You lost your pocket-book while you were bathing, Mr. Cazalette?" I
asked, wishful to know all his details.

He turned on his bed, pointing to a venerable Norfork jacket which
hung on a peg in a recess by the washstand. I knew it well enough: I
had often seen him in it first thing of a morning.

"It's my custom," said he, "to array myself in that old coatie when I
go for my bit dip, you see--it's thick and it's warm, and I've had it
twenty years or more--good tweed it is, and homespun. And whenever
I've gone out here of a morning, I've pu