to work as soon as I got back to headquarters this forenoon, and up to the time I set off to show you this, Mr. Raven, we'd learned nothing. It's a queer thing, but we haven't come across anybody who saw this man after he left you, Mr. Middlebrook, yesterday afternoon. You say he turned inland, towards Denwick, when he left you after coming out of Claigue's place—well, my men have inquired in every village and at every farmstead and wayside cottage within an area of ten or twelve miles, and we haven't heard a word of him. Where did he go? Whom did he come across?"
"I should say that's obvious," said I. "He came across the man of whom he heard at the Mariner's Joy—the man who, like himself, was asking for information about an old churchyard in which people called Netherfield are buried."
"We've heard all about that from the man who told him—Jim Gelthwaite, the drover," replied the inspector. "He's told us of his meeting with such a man, a night or two ago. But we can't get any information on that point, either. Nobody else seems to have seen that man, any more than they've seen Salter Quick!"
"I suppose there are places along this coast where a man might hide?" I suggested.
"Caves, now?" put in Mr. Cazalette.
"There may be," admitted the inspector. "Of course I shall have the coast searched."
"Aye, but ye'll not find anything—now!" affirmed Mr. Cazalette. "Yon man, that Jim the drover told of, he might be hiding here or there in a cave, or some out o' the way place, of which there's plenty in this
