Glancing around the room as he sat in a big easy chair, his hands behind his head, Brereton's eyes fell suddenly on Kitely's legacy to Windle Bent. The queer-looking old volume which, because of its black calf binding and brass clasp, might easily have been taken for a prayer-book, lay just where Bent had set it down on his desk when Christopher Pett formally handed it over--so far as Brereton knew Bent up to now had never even opened it. And it was with no particular motive that Brereton now reached out and picked it up, and unsnapping the clasp began idly to turn over the leaves on which the old detective had pasted cuttings from newspapers and made entries in his crabbed handwriting. Brereton believed that he was idly handling what Pett had jocosely described the book to be--a mere scrap-book. It never entered his head that he held in his hands almost the whole solution of the mystery which was puzzling him. No man knows how inspiration comes to him, and Brereton never knew how it was that suddenly, in the flash of an eye, in the swiftness of thought, he knew that he had found what he wanted. Suggestion might have had something to do with it. Kitely had written the word _Scrap-book_ on the first blank page. Afterwards, at the tops of pages, he had filled in dates in big figures--for reference--1875--1879--1887--and so on. And Brereton suddenly saw, and understood, and realized. The cryptic entry in Kitely's pocket-book became plain as the plainest print. _M. & C. v. S. B. cir. 81_:--Brereton could amplify that now. Kitely, like all men who dabble in antiquarian pursuits, knew a bit of Latin, and naturally made an occasional airing of his knowledge. The full entry, of course, meant M. &. C. _vide_ (=see) Scrap-Book _circa_ (=about) 1881. With a sharp exclamation of delight, Brereton turned over the pages of that queer record of crime and detection until he came to one over which the figure 1881 stood out boldly. A turn or two more of pages, and he had found what he wanted. There it was--a long cutting from what was evidently a local newspaper--a cutting which extended over two or three leaves of the book--and at the end a memorandum in Kitely's handwriting, evidently made some years before. The editor of that local newspaper had considered the case which Kitely had so carefully scissored from his columns worthy of four headlines in big capitals:-- THE BUILDING SOCIETY DEFALCATIONS MALLOWS AND CHIDFORTH AT THE WILCHESTER ASSIZES VERDICT AND SENTENCE