proachable," replied Miss Raven. "There are others at which I should as soon think of asking a question of the Sphinx."
"Wait!" said I. "Mr. Cazalette, I firmly believe, knows something. And now—you know more than you did. One mystery has gone by the board."
"It leaves the main one all the blacker," answered the inspector. "Who, of all the folk in these parts, is one to suspect? Yet—it would seem that Salter Quick found somebody here to whom his presence was so decidedly unwelcome that there was nothing for it but—swift and certain death! Why? Well—death ensures silence."
Miss Raven and I took our leave for the second time. We walked some distance from the police-station before exchanging a word: I do not know what she was thinking of; as for myself, I was speculating on the change in my opinion brought about by the rough-and-ready statement of the brusque Yorkshireman. For until then I had firmly believed that the man who had accosted our friend of the Mariner's Joy, Jim Gelthwaite, the drover, was the man who had murdered Salter Quick. My notion was that this man, whoever he was, had foregathered somewhere with Quick, that they were known to each other, and had a common object, and that he had knifed Quick for purposes of his own. And now that idea was exploded, and so far as I could see, the search for the real assassin was yet to begin.
Suddenly Miss Raven spoke.
"I suppose it's scarcely possible that the murderer was present at that inquest?" she asked, half-timidly, as if afraid of my ridiculing her suggestion.
