t my pocket-book in the inside
pocket, and laid the coat itself and the rest o' my scanty attire on
the bank there down at Kernwick Cove while I went in the water. And I
did that very same thing this morning--and when I came to my clothes
again, the pocket-book was gone!"

"You saw nobody about?" I suggested.

"Nobody," said he. "But Lord, man, I know how easy it was to do the
thing! You'll bear in mind that on the right hand side of that cove
the plantation comes right down to the edge of the bit of cliff--well,
a man lurking amongst the shrubs and undergrowth 'ud have nothing to
do but reach his arm to the bank, draw my coatie to his nefarious
self, and abstract my property. And by the time I was on dry land
again, and wanting my garments, he'd be a quarter of a mile away!"

"And--the clue?" I asked.

He edged a little nearer to me, and dropped his voice still lower.

"I'm telling you," he said. "Now you'll let your mind go back to the
morning whereon you found yon man Quick lying dead and murdered on the
sand? And you'll remember that before ever you were down at the place,
I'd been there before you. You'll wonder how it comes about that I
didn't find what you found, but then, there's a many big rocks and
boulders standing well up on that beach, and its very evident that the
corpse was obscured from my view by one or other and maybe more of
'em. Anyway, I didn't find Salter Quick--but I did find something that
maybe--mind, I'm saying maybe, Middlebrook--had to do with his
murder."

"What, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, though I knew well enough what it was.
I wanted him to say, and have done with it; his circumlocution was
getting wearisome. But he was one of those old men who won't allow
their cattle to be hurried, and he went on in his long-winded way.

"You'll be aware," he continued, "that there's a deal of gorse and
bramble growing right down to the very edge of the coast thereabouts,
Middlebrook. Scrub--that sort o' thing. The stuff that if it catches
anything loose, anything protruding from say, the pocket of a garment,
'll lay hold and stick to it. Aye, well, on one of those bushes, gorse
or bramble I cannot rightly say which, just within the entrance to the
plantation, I saw, fluttering in the morning breeze that came sharp
and refreshing off the face of the water, a handkerchief. And there
was two sorts o' stains on it--caused in the one case by mud--the
soft mud of the adjacent beach--and in the other by