“Well?” said I, seeing quick enough that she’d some notion in her mind.  “You’ve found something out?”

Without answering the question in words she went out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and presently came back to us, carrying in one hand a man’s collar and in the other Gilverthwaite’s blue serge jacket.  And she turned the inside of the collar to us, pointing her finger to some words stamped in black on the linen.

“Take heed of that!” she said.  “He’d a dozen of those collars, brand-new, when he came, and this, you see, is where he bought them; and where he bought them, there, too, he bought his ready-made suit of clothes—­that was brand-new as well,—­here’s the name on a tab inside the coat:  Brown Brothers, Gentlemen’s Outfitters, Exchange Street, Liverpool.  What does all that prove but that it was from Liverpool he came?”

“Aye!” I said.  “And it proves, too, that he was wanting an outfit when he came to Liverpool from—­where?  A long way further afield, I’m thinking!  But it’s something to know as much as that, and you’ve no doubt hit on a clue that might be useful, mother.  And if we can find out that the other man came from Liverpool, too, why then—­”

But I stopped short there, having a sudden vision of a very wide world of which Liverpool was but an outlet.  Where had Gilverthwaite last come from when he struck Liverpool, and set himself up with new clothes and linen?  And had this mysterious man who had met such a terrible fate come also from some far-off part, to join him in whatever it was that had brought Gilverthwaite to Berwick?  And—­a far more important thing,—­mysterious as these two men were, what about the equally mysterious man that was somewhere in the background—­the murderer?

Chisholm and I had no great difficulty—­indeed, we had nothing that you might call a difficulty—­in finding out something about the murdered man at Peebles.  We had the half-ticket with us, and we soon got hold of the booking-clerk who had issued it on the previous afternoon.  He remembered the looks of the man to whom he had sold it, and described him to us well enough.  Moreover, he found us a ticket-collector who remembered that same man arriving in Peebles two days before, and giving up a ticket from Glasgow.  He had a reason for remembering him, for the man had asked him to recommend him to a good hotel, and had given him a two-shilling piece for his trouble.  So far, then, we had plain sailing, and it continued plain and easy during the short time we stayed in Peebles.  And it came to this:  the man we were asking about came to the town early in the afternoon of the day before the murder; he put himself up at the best hotel in the place; he was in and out of it all the afternoon and evening; he stayed there until the middle of the afternoon of the next day, when he paid his bill and left.  And there was the name he had written in the register book—­Mr. John Phillips, Glasgow.