“The sergeant there knows them,” he answered.  “He took the man.”

“It was this way, d’ye see, Mr. Lindsey,” said Chisholm, who was becoming an adept at putting statements before people.  “You know that bit of a public there is along the river yonder, outside the wall—­the Cod and Lobster?  Well, James Macfarlane, that keeps it, he came to me, maybe an hour or so ago, and said there was a fellow, a stranger, had been in and out there all day since morning, drinking; and though he wouldn’t say the man was what you’d rightly call drunk, still he’d had a skinful, and he was in there again, and they wouldn’t serve him, and he was getting quarrelsome and abusive, and in the middle of it had pulled out a purse that another man who was in there vowed and declared, aside, to Macfarlane, was Abel Crone’s.  So I got a couple of constables and went back with Macfarlane, and there was the man vowing he’d be served, and with a handful of money to prove that he could pay for whatever he called for.  And as he began to turn ugly, and show fight, we just clapped the bracelets on him and brought him along, and there he is in the cells—­and, of course, it’s sobered him down, and he’s demanding his rights to see a lawyer.”

“Who is he?” asked Mr. Lindsey.

“A stranger to the town,” replied Chisholm.  “And he’ll neither give name nor address but to a lawyer, he declares.  But we know he was staying at one of the common lodging-houses—­Watson’s—­three nights ago, and that the last two nights he wasn’t in there at all.”

“Well—­where’s that purse?” demanded Mr. Lindsey.  “Mr. Moneylaws here says he can identify it, if it’s Crone’s.”

Chisholm opened a drawer and took out what I at once knew to be Abel Crone’s purse—­which was in reality a sort of old pocket-book or wallet, of some sort of skin, with a good deal of the original hair left on it, and tied about with a bit of old bootlace.  There were both gold and silver in it—­just as I had seen when Crone pulled it out to find me some change for a five-shilling piece I had given him—­and more by token, there was the five-shilling piece itself!

“That’s Crone’s purse!” I exclaimed.  “I’ve no doubt about that.  And that’s a crown piece I gave him myself; I’ve no doubt about that either!”

“Let us see the man,” said Mr. Lindsey.

Chisholm led us down a corridor to the cells, and unlocked a door.  He stepped within the cell behind it, motioning us to follow.  And there, on the one stool which the place contained, sat a big, hulking fellow that looked like a navvy, whose rough clothes bore evidence of his having slept out in them, and whose boots were stained with the mud and clay which they would be likely to collect along the riverside.  He was sitting nursing his head in his hands, growling to himself, and he looked up at us as I have seen wild beasts look out through the bars of cages.  And somehow, there was that in the man’s eyes which made me think, there and then, that he was not reflecting on any murder that he had done, but was sullenly and stupidly angry with himself.