“Yes.”

They sat down, and taking the bag between his knees, Antony pressed the catch and opened it.

“Clothes!” said Bill.

Antony pulled out the top garment and shook it out.  It was a wet brown flannel coat.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked.

“Mark’s brown flannel suit.”

“The one he is advertised as having run away in?”

“Yes.  It looks like it.  Of course he had a dashed lot of clothes.”

Antony put his hand in the breast-pocket and took out some letters.  He considered them doubtfully for a moment.

“I suppose I’d better read them,” he said.  “I mean, just to see —­” He looked inquiringly at Bill, who nodded.  Antony turned on his torch and glanced at them.  Bill waited anxiously.

“Yes.  Mark ....  Hallo!”

“What is it?”

“The letter that Cayley was telling the Inspector about.  From Robert.  ‘Mark, your loving brother is coming to see you—­’ Yes, I suppose I had better keep this.  Well, that’s his coat.  Let’s have out the rest of it.”  He took the remaining clothes from the bag and spread them out.

“They’re all here,” said Bill.  “Shirt, tie, socks, underclothes, shoes—­yes, all of them.”

“All that he was wearing yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“What do you make of it?”

Bill shook his head, and asked another question.

“Is it what you expected?”

Antony laughed suddenly.

“It’s too absurd,” he said.  “I expected—­well, you know what I expected.  A body.  A body in a suit of clothes.  Well, perhaps it would be safer to hide them separately.  The body here, and the clothes in the passage, where they would never betray themselves.  And now he takes a great deal of trouble to hide the clothes here, and doesn’t bother about the body at all.”  He shook his head.  “I’m a bit lost for the moment, Bill, and that’s the fact.”

“Anything else there?”

Antony felt in the bag.

“Stones and—­yes, there’s something else.”  He took it out and held it up.  “There we are, Bill.”

It was the office key.

“By Jove, you were right.”

Antony felt in the bag again, and then turned it gently upside down on the grass.  A dozen large stones fell out—­and something else.  He flashed down his torch.

“Another key,” he said.

He put the two keys in his pocket, and sat there for a long time in silence, thinking.  Bill was silent, too, not liking to interrupt his thoughts, but at last he said: 

“Shall I put these things back?”

Antony looked up with a start.

“What?  Oh, yes.  No, I’ll put them back.  You give me a light, will you?”

Very slowly and carefully he put the clothes back in the bag, pausing as he took up each garment, in the certainty, as it seemed to Bill, that it had something to tell him if only he could read it.  When the last of them was inside, he still waited there on his knees, thinking.