We all got on our bicycles again and set off homewards, and Chisholm wheeled alongside me and we dropped behind a little.

“This is a strange affair,” said he, in a low voice; “and it’s like to be made stranger by this man’s sudden death.  I’d been looking to him to get news of this other man.  What do you know of Mr. Gilverthwaite, now?”

“Nothing!” said I.

“But he’s lodged with you seven weeks?” said he.

“If you’d known him, sergeant,” I answered, “you’d know that he was this sort of man—­you’d know no more of him at the end of seven months than you would at the end of seven weeks, and no more at the end of seven years than at the end of seven months.  We knew nothing, my mother and I, except that he was a decent, well-spoken man, free with his money and having plenty of it, and that his name was what he called it, and that he said he’d been a master mariner.  But who he was, or where he came from, I know no more than you do.”

“Well, he’ll have papers, letters, something or other that’ll throw some light on matters, no doubt?” he suggested.  “Can you say as to that?”

“I can tell you that he’s got a chest in his chamber that’s nigh as heavy as if it were made of solid lead,” I answered.  “And doubtless he’ll have a key on him or about him that’ll unlock it.  But what might be in it, I can’t say, never having seen him open it at any time.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll have to bring the superintendent down, and we must trouble your mother to let us take a look at this Mr. Gilverthwaite’s effects.  Had he a doctor to him since he was taken ill?”

“Dr. Watson—­this—­I mean yesterday—­afternoon,” I answered.

“Then there’ll be no inquest in his case,” said the sergeant, “for the doctor’ll be able to certify.  But there’ll be a searching inquiry in this murder affair, and as Gilverthwaite sent you to meet the man that’s been murdered—­”

“Wait a bit!” said I.  “You don’t know, and I don’t, that the man who’s been murdered is the man I was sent to meet.  The man I was to meet may have been the murderer; you don’t know who the murdered man is.  So you’d better put it this way:  since Gilverthwaite sent me to meet some man at the place where this murder’s been committed—­well?”

“That’ll be one of your lawyer’s quibbles,” said he calmly.  “My meaning’s plain enough—­we’ll want to find out, if we can, who it was that Gilverthwaite sent you to meet.  And—­for what reason?  And—­where it was that the man was to wait for him?  And I’ll get the superintendent to come down presently.”

“Make it in, say, half an hour,” said I.  “This is a queer business altogether, sergeant, and I’m so much in it that I’m not going to do things on my own responsibility.  I’ll call Mr. Lindsey up from his bed, and get him to come down to talk over what’s to be done.”

“Aye, you’re in the right of it there,” he said.  “Mr. Lindsey’ll know all the law on such matters.  Half an hour or so, then.”