"I'll tell you," answered Hawthwaite, settling himself in his chair. "It's a bit since--let us think, now--yes, it would be a day or two after that facsimile appeared in the _Monitor_ that a young man came to me here one evening: respectable artisan sort of chap. He told me that he was in the employ of a typewriter company at Clothford, which, Mr. Brent, as Miss Queenie there knows, is our big town, only a few miles away. He said that he'd come to tell me something in confidence. The previous day, he said, Mr. Crood, of Hathelsborough, had come to their place in Clothford and had brought with him an old-fashioned typewriter which, he told them, he had bought when such things first came out. He wanted to know the thing being, he said, an old favourite--if they couldn't do it up for him, go through its mechanism thoroughly, supply new letters, and so on. They said they could. He left it to be done, and it was handed over to this young man. Now then, this young man, my informant, has some relations here in Hathelsborough; a day or so before Simon Crood called with his machine, they sent him--the young man--a copy of the _Monitor_ with this facsimile letter enclosed. Being concerned with such things in his trade, he was naturally interested in the facsimile, and of course, as an expert, he noticed the broken letters. However, he didn't connect the facsimile with Crood's machine at first. But, happening to look at that machine more narrowly, to see exactly what had to be done to it, he--as he phrased it--ran off the keys on a sheet of paper, and he then saw at once that he had before him the identical machine on which the threatening letter to our late Mayor had been typed! And so he came to me!" "What have you done about it?" asked Brent. Hawthwaite gave him a knowing look. "Well, I'll tell you that too," he answered. "I've got the machine! It's there--in that box in the corner. The Clothford firm will make an excuse to Mr. Crood that they've had to send this machine away for repairs--eh? Of course I'm not going to let it out of my possession until--well, until we know more." "There's no doubt he wrote that threatening letter," observed Brent. "Oh, no doubt, no doubt whatever," agreed Hawthwaite. "What about that handkerchief and the inquiry at the laundry?" asked Brent. Hawthwaite accompanied his reply with a nod and a wink.