xplanation. Bear in mind that I've kept
myself posted in those murders through the newspapers, and also by
collecting a certain amount of local gossip. Now--you've a certain
somewhat fussy and garrulous old gentleman at Ravensdene Court--"

"Mr. Cazalette!" exclaimed Miss Raven.

"Mr. Cazalette is the name," said Baxter. "I have heard much of him,
through the sources I've just referred to. Now, this Mr. Cazalette,
going to or coming from a place where he bathed every morning, which
place happened to be near the spot whereat Salter Quick was murdered,
found a blood-stained handkerchief?"

"He did," said I. "And a lot of mystery attaches to it."

"That handkerchief belongs to my French friend," said Baxter. "I told
you that he joined me at York from Berwick. As a matter of fact, for
some little time just before the Salter Quick affair, he was down on
this coast, posing as a tourist, but really just ascertaining if
things were as I'd left them at the ruins in the wood above this cove
and what would be our best method of getting the chests of stuff away.
For a week or so, he lodged at an inn somewhere, I think, near
Ravensdene Court, and he used sometimes to go down to the shore for a
swim. One morning he cut his foot on the pebbles, and staunched the
blood with his handkerchief, which he carelessly threw away--and your
Mr. Cazalette evidently found it. That's the explanation of that
little matter. And now for the tobacco-box."

"A much more important point," said I.

"Just so," agreed Baxter. "Now, my friend and I first heard of the murder
while we were at York. In the newspapers that we read, there was an
account of a conversation which took place in, I believe, Mr. Raven's
coach-house, or some out-building, whither the dead man's body had been
carried, between this old Mr. Cazalette and a police-inspector, regarding
a certain metal tobacco-box found on Salter Quick's body. Now I give you
my word that that news was the first intimation we had ever had that the
Quicks were in England! Until then we hadn't the slightest idea that they
were in England--but we knew what those mysterious scratches in the
tobacco-box signified--Salter had made a rude plan of the place I had told
him of, and was in Northumberland to search for it. Then, later, we read
your evidence at the opening of the inquest, and heard what you had to
tell about his quest of the Netherfield graves, and--just to satisfy
ourselves--we determined to get ho