"A very interesting bit of life-drama, Scarterfield," said I. "And there have been far stranger things than it would be if this Netherfield Baxter of Blyth turned out to be the William Netherfield of the _Elizabeth Robinson_. You haven't hit on anything in the shape of a bridge, a connecting link between the two?" "Not yet, anyway," he answered. "And I don't think it's at all likely that I shall, here, for, as I said just now, nobody in this place has ever heard of Netherfield Baxter since he walked out of his lodging one evening and clean vanished. To be sure, there's been nobody at all anxious to hear of him. For one thing, he left no near and dear relations or friends--for another, he left no debts behind him. The last fact, of course," added Scarterfield, with a wink, "was due to another, very pertinent fact--nobody, to be sure, in his latter stages, would give him credit!" "You've more to tell," I suggested. "Oh, much more!" he acquiesced. "We're about half-way through the surface matters. Now then--you're bearing in mind that Netherfield Baxter disappeared, very suddenly, in May 1904. Perhaps the town didn't make much to do over his disappearance for a good reason--it was just then in the very midst of what we generally call a nine days' wonder. For some months the Old Alliance Bank here had been in charge of a temporary manager, in consequence of the regular manager's long-continued illness. This temporary manager was a chap named Lester--John Martindale Lester--who had come here from a branch of the same bank at Hexham, across country. Now, this Lester was a young man who was greatly given to going about on a motor-cycle--not so many of those things about, then, as we see now; he was always tearing about the country, they say, on half-holidays, and Saturdays and Sundays. And one evening, careering round a sharp corner, somewhere just outside the town, in the dark, he ran full tilt into a cart that carried no tail-light, and--broke his neck! They picked him up dead." "Well?" said I. "You're wondering if that's anything to do with Netherfield Baxter's disappearance?" said Scarterfield. "Well--it's an odd thing, but out of all the folk that I've made inquiry of in the town, I haven't come across one yet who voluntarily suggested that it had! But--I do! And you'll presently see why I think so. Now, this man, John Martindale Lester, was accidentally killed about the beginning of the first week in May 1904. Three or four days later, Netherfield Baxter cleared out. I've been careful, in my conversations with the townfolk--officials, mostly--not to appear to connect Lester's death with Baxter's departure. But that there was a connection, I'm dead certain. Baxter hooked it, Mr. Middlebrook, because he knew that Lester's sudden death would lead to an examination of things at the Old Alliance Bank!" "Ah!" said I. "I begin to see things!"