When the inspector had finished his story he picked up the blue foolscap on which was inscribed the sprawling report of the churchtown sergeant.  With a severe effort he mastered the matter contained under the flowing curves and flourishes.

“The local man seems certain that it is suicide,” he said, “but the sister’s statement certainly calls for further investigation.  How far away is this place?”

“Flint House?  About five miles across the moors.  I’ve hired a motor-car to drive you up.  Nothing has been disturbed so far.  As soon as I learnt you were coming I telephoned to Pengowan to leave things as they were until you arrived.”

Barrant nodded approval.  “Let us go,” he said.

The car was waiting outside.  The way lay through the town and then across the moors in undulating ascent until at the highest point a rough track crossed the road at a spot where four parishes met.  On one side of these cross-roads was a Druidical stone circle, and on the other was a wayside cross to the memory of an Irish female saint who had crossed to Cornwall as a missionary in the tenth century, after first recording a holy vow that she would not change her shift until she had redeemed the whole of the Cornish natives from idolatry.

From the cross-roads the way again inclined downward to the sea in increasing savageness of desolation.  Stones littered the purple surface of the moors, or rose in insecure heaps on the steep slopes, as though piled there by the hands of the giants supposed to have once roved these gloomy wilds.  Solitude held sway, but there was more than solitude in that lonely aspect:  something prehistoric and unknown, unearthly, incomprehensible.  Cairn Brea and the Hill of Fires brooded in the distance; the remains of a Druid’s altar showed darkly on the summit of a nearer hill.  No sound broke the stillness except the faint and distant sobbing of the sea.

St. Fair lay almost hidden in a bend or fold of the moors about a mile before them, and beyond it Dawfield pointed out to his companion Flint House, standing in gaunt outline on a tongue of coast thrust defiantly into the restless waters of the Atlantic.

“A lonely weird place,” said Barrant, eyeing his surroundings attentively.  “An ideal setting for a mysterious crime.”

They drove on in silence until they reached the churchtown.  Inspector Dawfield steered the car to the modest dwelling of Sergeant Pengowan, whom they found at his gate awaiting their arrival—­a shaggy figure of a rural policeman of the Cornish Celtic variety, with no trace of Spanish or Italian ancestry in his florid face, inquisitively Irish blue-grey eyes, reddish whiskers, and burly frame.

Inspector Dawfield bade him good-day, and added the information that his companion was Detective Barrant, of Scotland Yard.  Pengowan greeted Barrant with the respect due to the name of Scotland Yard, and took a humble seat at the back of the car.