“You, too?”

“Knew him intimate.  Know him?  Why, I live but two doors away from him in the same court.”

“Look here,” said Mr. Rogers, slowly, after a pause, “this is a black business, and a curst mysterious one, and I wasn’t born with the gift of seeing daylight through a brick wall.  But speaking as a magistrate, Mr. What’s-your-name, I ought to warn you against saying what may be used for evidence.  As for you, lad, you’d best tell as much as you know.  What d’ye say his name was?”

“Coffin, sir.”

“H’m, he’s earned it.  The back of his head’s smashed all to pieces.  Lived in Falmouth, you say?  And you knew him there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what was he doing in these parts?”

“He started to call on my father, sir.”

“Eh?  You knew of his coming?”

“Yes, sir.  We planned it together.”

Mr. Rogers, still on his knees, leaned back and regarded me fixedly.

“You planned it together?” he repeated slowly.  “Well, go on.  He started to call on your father?  Why?”

“He wanted to show my father something,” said I, with a glance at Mr. Goodfellow.  “Are you sure, sir, there’s nothing in his pockets?”

“Not a penny-piece.  I’ll search ’em again if you insist, though I don’t like the job.”

“He carried it in his breast-pocket, sir; there, on the left side.”

“Then your question’s easy to answer.”  Mr. Rogers turned back the lapel and pointed.  The pocket hung inside out.  “But what was it he carried?”

I hesitated, with another glance towards Mr. Goodfellow, who at the same moment uttered a cry and sprang for a thicket of brambles directly behind Mr. Rogers’s back.  Mr. Rogers leapt up, with an oath.

“No, you don’t!” he threatened, preparing to spring in pursuit.

But Mr. Goodfellow, not heeding him, plunged a hand among the brambles and drew forth a walking-stick of ebony, carved in rings, ending with a ferrule in an iron spike—­Captain Coffin’s walking-stick.

“I glimpsed at it, there, lyin’ like a snake,” he began, and let fall the stick with another sudden, sharp cry.  “Ur-rh!  There’s blood upon it!”

Mr. Rogers picked it up and examined it loathingly.  Blood there was—­blood mixed with grey hairs upon its heavy ebony knob, and blood again upon its wicked-looking spike.

“This settles all question of the weapon,” he said.  “The owner of this—­”

We cried out, speaking together, that the stick belonged to the murdered man; and just then a voice hailed us, and Constable Hosken came panting up, with two of Miss Belcher’s woodmen at his heels.

Mr. Rogers directed them to fetch a hurdle.  Then came the question whither to carry the corpse, and after some discussion one of the woodmen suggested that Miss Belcher’s cricket pavilion lay handy, a couple of hundred yards beyond the rise of the park, across the stream.  “At this time of year the lady wouldn’t object—­”