“But why?  It is merely a farm labourer,” said Cleek, glancing through the open side of the lich-gate and down the road.  “You can see that for yourself.”

“Yes, but—­who knows? who can tell?  There is no clue to the actual person and he is so cunning, so crafty—­Oh, please, will you go?  Afterward, if you like, we can meet here again.  To-day I am too frightened to stay.”

He saw that she was in a state of extreme nervous terror; that it would be cruel to subject her to any further suffering, and without one more word, walked past her into the Churchyard and made his way over the green ridge that rose immediately behind the building and down the slope beyond until he came to the extreme other side.  And there in the shade of a thickly grown spinney, he found Mr. Marverick Narkom sitting with his back against a beech-tree smoking a nerve-soothing cigar and expectantly awaiting him.

“My dear fellow, I never was so glad,” he said, tossing away his smoke and jumping up as Cleek appeared.  “Happy coincidence my motoring down here—­eh, what?  Wife in these parts visiting.  Rum, my turning up just after Miss Lorne had written you and at a time when we both are needed, wasn’t it?”

“Very,” said Cleek, pulling out a cigarette and stretching himself full length upon the ground.  “Would as soon have expected to run foul of a specimen of the Great Auk endeavouring to rear a family in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square.  Well, what’s it now, Mr. Narkom?—­I’m told you know the details.  A match please, if you have one.  Thanks very much.  Now then let’s have the facts.  What sort of a case is it?”

“The knottiest in all my experience, the strangest that even you have ever handled,” replied the Superintendent, impressively.  “It’s a murder—­three murders, in fact, with a possible fourth and a fifth in the near future if the diabolical rascal who is at the bottom of it isn’t pulled up sharp and his amazing modus operandi discovered.

“The case will interest you, my dear chap; it is so startlingly original in its methods of procedure, so complex, so weird, and so appallingly mysterious.  Conceive if you can, my dear fellow, an individual so supernaturally cunning that he not only kills without a trace, but kills in the presence of watchers—­kills whilst the victim is in the very arms of those watchers!  And yet escapes, unseen, unknown, without a clue to tell when, where, or how he entered the room or left it; when, where, or how he struck the blow, or why; yet did strike it, despite the sleepless vigil of a man who not only sat up all night with the victim, but held him in his arms to be sure that nobody could get at him; nobody so much as approach him without his guardian’s knowledge!”

Cleek twitched round sharply and sat up, leaning upon his elbow and looking at Narkom as though he doubted his sanity.

“Let me have that again!” he said in sharp, crisp tones.  “A man killed whilst another man held him—­held him in his arms—­and watched over him, and yet the other man saw nothing of the murderer?  Is that what you said?”