r is about! and though he mayn't have thought to get his
handkerchief, he may have hoped that he'd secure some result o' my
labours in the photographic line."

"Mr. Cazalette!" said I, "what were the results of your labours? I
don't suppose that the print which was in your pocket-book was the
only one you possess?"

"You're right there," he replied. "It wasn't. If the thief thought he
was securing something unique, he was mistaken. But--I didn't want
him, or anybody, to get hold of even one print, for as sure as we're
living men, Middlebrook, what was on the inside of that lid was--a key
to something!"

"You forget that the tobacco-box itself has been stolen from the
police's keeping," I reminded him.

"And I don't forget anything of the sort," he retorted. "And the fact
you've mentioned makes me all the more assured, my man, that what I
say is correct! There's him, or there's them--in all likelihood it's
the plural--that's uncommonly anxious, feverishly anxious, to get hold
of that key that I suspicion. What were Salter Quick's pockets turned
out for? What were the man's clothes slashed and hacked for? Why did
whoever slew Noah Quick at Saltash treat the man in similar fashion?
It wasn't money the two men were murdered for!--no, it was for
information, a secret! Or, as I put it before, the key to something."

"And you believe, really and truly, that this key is in the marks or
scratches or whatever they are on the lid of the tobacco-box?" I
asked.

"Aye, I do!" he exclaimed. "And what's more, Middlebrook, I believe
I'm a doited old fool! If I'd contrived to get a good, careful,
penetrating look at that box, without saying anything to the police, I
should ha' shown some common-sense. But like the blithering old idiot
that I am, I spoke my thoughts aloud before a company, and I made a
present of an idea to these miscreants. Until I said what I did, the
murderous gang that knifed yon two men hadn't a notion that Salter
Quick carried a key in his tobacco-box! Now--they know."

"You don't mean to suggest that any of the murderers were present when
you asked permission to photograph the box!" I exclaimed.
"Impossible!"

"There's very few impossibilities in this world, Middlebrook," he
answered. "I'm not saying that any of the gang were present in Raven's
outhouse yonder, where they carried the poor fellow's body, but there
were a dozen or more men heard what I said to the police-inspector,
like the old fool I was,