“You should have refused and have detained the boy.  Well?”

“I was moved by the little chap’s tears,” said the constable, abashed, “so I let him go into the cell.”

“Were you with him?” asked the inspector sharply.

“No, sir.  We left them alone for a few minutes.  As the boy was so sad and cut up, I thought there would be no harm in doing that.  Well, sir, the boy came out again in ten minutes, still crying, and said he would get a lawyer to defend his father.  He did not believe his father had passed the money.  Then he went away.  Later—­about half an hour later, we went into the cell and found the man lying groaning, with an empty bottle of whisky beside him.  The doctor came and said he thought the man had been poisoned.  The man groaned and said the young shaver had done for him.  Then he became unconscious and died.”

Jennings listened to this statement calmly.  He saw again the hand of the coiners.  The person who controlled the members evidently thought that the man would blab, and accordingly took precautionary measures to silence him.  Without doubt, the man had been poisoned, and the boy had been sent to do it.  “What is the boy like?” he asked.

“Billy Tyke, sir?” said the constable, replying on a nod from his chief, to whom he looked for instructions, “a thin boy, fair and with red rims round his eyes—­looks half starved, sir, and has a scarred mouth, as though he had been cut on the upper lip with a knife.”

Jennings started, but suppressed his emotion under the keen eyes of the observant Twining.  He had an idea that he knew who the boy was, but as yet could not be sure.  “I’ll cut along to the public-house where this man was arrested,” said Jennings, “I suppose you’ll hold an inquest.”

“Certainly, seeing the man has been poisoned.”  Then the inspector proceeded to rebuke the constable who had performed his duty so ill, and threatened him with dismissal.  Jennings left in the midst of the trouble, after getting the inspector to promise that, he would report the result of the inquest.

At the public-house—­it was the “White Horse,” Keighley, an adjoining suburb—­Jennings learned that the man who called himself—­or rather who was called by his presumed son—­ Tyke, was not an habitue of the place.  Therefore, the boy could not have known that his supposed father was there.  Apparently some information had reached the lad, whereby he was able to trace Tyke to the prison, and had carried to him there the bottle of poisoned whisky.  Jennings returned to town quite satisfied that he had another clue to the existence of the coiners.  Also, he determined to satisfy himself on a point concerning Maraquito, about which he had long been in doubt.

For the next few days Jennings did nothing.  He kept away from Mallow, as he did not wish that young man to know that he was still going on with the case.  Sometimes he went to Maraquito’s place, and learned incidentally that, as there was a chance of her being cured, she was about to give up the gambling salon.  Jennings quite expected this information, and assured Hale, who gave it to him, that it was the best thing Maraquito could do.  “Sooner or later the police will pounce down on this place,” he said.