the occasion of his visit to Kelpieshaw. As for the inspector and his man and myself, we sat in a line, on three very stiff-seated, straight-backed chairs, smoking Parslewe's cigars, for lack of anything better to do, and watched and waited. Only once during that period of suspense did any of us speak; that was when the inspector, happening to catch my eye, gave me a quiet whisper.
"Queer business, Mr. Craye!" he said. "Odd!"
"Very," said I.
He smiled and looked round at his man. But the man was one of those stolid-faced individuals who seem as if nothing could move them; also, he appeared to be relishing Parslewe's cigar. With this in one corner of his lips he sat immovable, watching the door through which Parslewe and Pawley had vanished. I think he never took his eyes off it; anyway, my recollection of him is as of a man who could sit down and watch a thing or a person for hours and hours and hours, without as much as flickering an eyelid—an uncanny, uncomforting man—doubtless fitted, by some freak of nature, to his trade of sleuth-hound.
