I set out for the office earlier than usual that morning, and went round by way of the back street at the bottom of which Crone’s store stood facing the river.  I sometimes walked round that way of a morning, and I knew that Crone was as a rule at his place very early, amongst his old rubbish, or at his favourite game of gossiping with the fishermen that had their boats drawn up there.  But when I reached it, the shop was still shut, and though I waited as long as I could, Crone did not come.  I knew where he lived, at the top end of the town, and I thought to meet him as I walked up to Mr. Lindsey’s; but I had seen nothing of him by the time I reached our office door, so I laid the matter aside until noon, meaning to get a word with him when I went home to my dinner.  And though I could have done so there and then, I determined not to say anything to Mr. Lindsey until I had given Crone the chance of saying it with me—­to him, or to the police.  I expected, of course, that Crone would fly into a rage at my suggestion—­if so, then I would tell him, straight out, that I would just take my own way, and take it at once.

But before noon there was another development in this affair.  In the course of the morning Mr. Lindsey bade me go with him down to my mother’s house, where Mrs. Hanson had been lodged for the night—­we would go through Gilverthwaite’s effects with her, he said, with a view to doing what we could to put her in possession.  It might—­probably would—­be a lengthy and a difficult business that, he remarked, seeing that there was so much that was dark about her brother’s recent movements; and as the woman was obviously poor, we had best be stirring on her behalf.  So down we went, and in my mother’s front parlour, the same that Gilverthwaite had taken as his sitting-room, Mr. Lindsey opened the heavy box for the second time, in Mrs. Hanson’s presence, and I began to make a list of its contents.  At the sight of the money it contained, the woman began to tremble.

“Eh, mister!” she exclaimed, almost tearfully, “but that’s a sight of money to be lying there, doing naught!  I hope there’ll be some way of bringing it to me and mine—­we could do with it, I promise you!”

“We’ll do our best, ma’am,” said Mr. Lindsey.  “As you’re next of kin there oughtn’t to be much difficulty, and I’ll hurry matters up for you as quickly as possible.  What I want this morning is for you to see all there is in this chest; he seems to have had no other belongings than this and his clothes—­here at Mrs. Moneylaws’, at any rate.  And as you see, beyond the money, there’s little else in the chest but cigars, and box after box of curiosities that he’s evidently picked up in his travels—­coins, shells, ornaments, all sorts of queer things—­some of ’em no doubt of value.  But no papers—­no letters—­no documents of any sort.”

A notion suddenly occurred to me.

“Mr. Lindsey,” said I, “you never turned out the contents of any of these smaller boxes the other night.  There might be papers in one or other of them.”