"No slight one!" said he. "There's something in that diagram. But—what?"
Miss Raven, timid, and a little shy of concentrated attention, laid the photograph again on the table.
"Don't—don't you think there may be some explanation of this in what Salter Quick said to Mr. Middlebrook when they met on the cliffs?" she asked. "He told Mr. Middlebrook that he wanted to find a churchyard where there were graves of people named Netherfield, but he didn't know exactly where it was, though it was somewhere in this locality. Now supposing this is a rough outline of that churchyard? These outer lines may be the wall—then these little marks may show the situation of the Netherfield graves. And that cross in the corner—perhaps there is something buried, hidden, there, which Salter Quick wanted to find?"
The detective uttered a sharp exclamation and snatched up the photograph again.
"Good! Good!" he said. "Upon my word, I shouldn't wonder! To be sure, that may be it. What's against it?"
"This," remarked Mr. Cazalette solemnly. "That there isn't anybody of the name of Netherfield buried between Alnmouth and Budle Bay! That's a fact."
"Established," added the police-inspector, "by as an exhaustive inquiry as anybody could make. It is a fact—as Mr. Cazalette says."
"Well," observed Scarterfield, "but Salter Quick may have been wrong in his locality. You can be sure of this—whatever secret he held was got from somebody else. He may have been twenty, thirty,
