“Oh, don’t ask me!” I exclaimed.  “It seems like there was nothing but murder on every hand of us!  And whoever did this can’t be far away—­only the night’s that black, and there’s so many holes and corners hereabouts that it would be like searching a rabbit-warren—­you’ll have to get help from the town.”

“Aye, to be sure!” he agreed.  “But we’ll take a view of things ourselves, first.  There may be effects on him that’ll suggest something.”

We carried the body into the room when the policeman came up with the lamps from the car, and stretched it out on the table at which Hollins and I had sat not so long before; though that time, indeed, now seemed to me to belong to some other life!  And Chisholm made a hasty examination of what there was in the man’s pockets, and there was little that had any significance, except that in a purse which he carried in an inner pocket of his waistcoat there was a considerable sum of money in notes and gold.

The other policeman, who held one of the lamps over the table while Chisholm was making this search, waited silently until it was over, and then he nodded his head at the stair.

“There’s some boxes, or cases, down in yon car,” he remarked.  “All fastened up and labelled—­it might be worth while to take a look into them, sergeant.  What’s more, there’s tools lying in the car that looks like they’d been used to fasten them up.”

“We’ll have them up here, then,” said Chisholm.  “Stop you here, Mr. Hugh, while we fetch them—­and don’t let your young lady come down while that’s lying here.  You might cover him up,” he went on, with a significant nod.  “It’s an ill sight for even a man’s eyes, that!”

There were some old, moth-eaten hangings about the walls here and there, and I took one down and laid it over Hollins, wondering while I did this office for him what strange secret it was that he had carried away into death, and why that queer and puzzled expression had crossed his face in death’s very moment.  And that done, I ran up to Maisie again, bidding her be patient awhile, and we talked quietly a bit until Chisholm called me down to look at the boxes.  There were four of them—­stout, new-made wooden cases, clamped with iron at the corners, and securely screwed down; and when the policemen invited me to feel the weight, I was put in mind, in a lesser degree, of Gilverthwaite’s oak-chest.

“What do you think’s like to be in there, now, Mr. Hugh?” asked Chisholm.  “Do you know what I think?  There’s various heavy metals in the world—­aye, and isn’t gold one of the heaviest?—­it’ll not be lead that’s in here!  And look you at that!”

He pointed to some neatly addressed labels tacked strongly to each lid—­the writing done in firm, bold, print-like characters: 

John Harrison, passenger, by S.S.  Aerolite.  Newcastle to Hamburg.

I was looking from one label to the other and finding them all alike, when we heard voices at the foot of the stair, and from out of them came Superintendent Murray’s, demanding loudly who was above.