“You didn’t let him know that you and I had talked last night?” he asked at once.

“No,” said I.

“That’s right—­and I didn’t either,” he went on.  “I don’t want him to know I spoke to you before speaking to him—­it would look as if I were trying to get his clerk away from him.  Well, it’s settled, then, Moneylaws?  You’ll take the post?”

“I shall be very glad to, Sir Gilbert,” said I.  “And I’ll serve you to the best of my ability, if you’ll have a bit of patience with me at the beginning.  There’ll be some difference between my present job and this you’re giving me, but I’m a quick learner, and—­”

“Oh, that’s all right, man!” he interrupted carelessly.  “You’ll do all that I want.  I hate accounts, and letter-writing, and all that sort of thing—­take all that off my hands, and you’ll do.  Of course, whenever you’re in a fix about anything, come to me—­but I can explain all there is to do in an hour’s talk with you at the beginning.  All right!—­ask Mr. Lindsey to step in to me, and we’ll put the matter on a business footing.”

Mr. Lindsey came in and took over the job of settling matters on my behalf.  And the affair was quickly arranged.  I was to stay with Mr. Lindsey another month, so as to give him the opportunity of getting a new head clerk, then I was to enter on my new duties at Hathercleugh.  I was to have five hundred pounds a year salary, with six months’ notice on either side; at the end of five years, if I was still in the situation, the terms were to be revised with a view to an increase—­and all this was to be duly set down in black and white.  These propositions, of course, were Mr. Lindsey’s, and Sir Gilbert assented to all of them readily and promptly.  He appeared to be the sort of man who is inclined to accept anything put before him rather than have a lot of talk about it.  And presently, remarking that that was all right, and he’d leave Mr. Lindsey to see to it, he rose to go, but at the door paused and came back.

“I’m thinking of dropping in at the police-station and telling Murray my ideas about that Crone affair,” he remarked.  “It’s my opinion, Mr. Lindsey, that there’s salmon-poaching going on hereabouts, and if my land adjoined either Tweed or Till I’d have spoken about it before.  There are queer characters about along both rivers at nights—­I know, because I go out a good deal, very late, walking, to try and cure myself of insomnia; and I know what I’ve seen.  It’s my impression that Crone was probably mixed up with some gang, and that his death arose out of an affray between them.”

“That’s probable,” answered Mr. Lindsey.  “There was trouble of that sort some years ago, but I haven’t heard of it lately.  Certainly, it would be a good thing to start the idea in Murray’s mind; he might follow it up and find something out.”

“That other business—­the Phillips murder—­might have sprung out of the same cause,” suggested Sir Gilbert.  “If those chaps caught a stranger in a lonely place—­”