"Up to now nobody knows," said Miss Raven. "Mr. Cazalette won't tell us anything."
"That looks as if he had discovered something," observed Lorrimore. "But—old gentlemen are a little queer, and a little vain. Perhaps he's suddenly going to let loose a tremendous theory and wants to perfect it before he speaks. Oh, well!" he added, almost indifferently, "I've known a good many murder mysteries in my time—out in India—and I always found that the really good way of getting at the bottom of them was to go right back!—as far back as possible. If I were the police in charge of these cases, I should put one question down before me and do nothing until I'd exhausted every effort to solve it."
"And that would be—what?" I asked.
"This," said he. "What were the antecedents of Noah and Salter Quick?"
"You think they had a past?" suggested Miss Raven.
"Everybody has a past," answered Lorrimore. "It may be this; it may be that. But nearly all the problems of the present have their origin and solution in the past. Find out what and where those two middle-aged men had been, in their time!—and then there'll be a chance to work forward."
The rain cleared off soon after we had finished tea, and presently Miss Raven and I took our leave. Lorrimore informed us that Mr. Raven had asked him to dinner on the following evening; he would accordingly see us again very soon.
"It will be quite an event for me!" he said, gaily, as he opened his garden gate. "I live like an
