"Sit you down, Middlebrook," he said. "We've some time yet before dinner, and I'm wanting to talk to you--in private, you'll bear in mind. There's things I know that I'm not willing--as yet--to tell to everybody. But I'll tell them to you, Middlebrook--for you're a sensible young fellow, and we'll take a bit of counsel together. Aye--there was that in my pocket-book that might be--I'll not say positively that it was, but that it might be--a clue to the identity of the man that murdered yon Salter Quick, and I'm sorry now that I've lost it and didn't take more care of it. But man! who'd ha' thought that I'd have my pocket-book stolen from under my very nose! And that's a convincing proof that there's uncommonly sharp and clever criminals around us in these parts, Middlebrook." "You lost your pocket-book while you were bathing, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, wishful to know all his details. He turned on his bed, pointing to a venerable Norfork jacket which hung on a peg in a recess by the washstand. I knew it well enough: I had often seen him in it first thing of a morning. "It's my custom," said he, "to array myself in that old coatie when I go for my bit dip, you see--it's thick and it's warm, and I've had it twenty years or more--good tweed it is, and homespun. And whenever I've gone out here of a morning, I've put my pocket-book in the inside pocket, and laid the coat itself and the rest o' my scanty attire on the bank there down at Kernwick Cove while I went in the water. And I did that very same thing this morning--and when I came to my clothes again, the pocket-book was gone!" "You saw nobody about?" I suggested. "Nobody," said he. "But Lord, man, I know how easy it was to do the thing! You'll bear in mind that on the right hand side of that cove the plantation comes right down to the edge of the bit of cliff--well, a man lurking amongst the shrubs and undergrowth 'ud have nothing to do but reach his arm to the bank, draw my coatie to his nefarious self, and abstract my property. And by the time I was on dry land again, and wanting my garments, he'd be a quarter of a mile away!" "And--the clue?" I asked. He edged a little nearer to me, and dropped his voice still lower. "I'm telling you," he said. "Now you'll let your mind go back to the morning whereon you found yon man Quick lying dead and murdered on the sand? And you'll remember that before ever you were down at the place, I'd been there before you. You'll wonder how it comes about that I didn't find what you found, but then, there's a many big rocks and boulders standing well up on that beach, and its very evident that the corpse was obscured from my view by one or other and maybe more of 'em. Anyway, I didn't find Salter Quick--but I did find something that maybe--mind, I'm saying maybe, Middlebrook--had to do with his murder."