Kean found Fayre waiting for him when he reached the hotel at Whitbury. Cynthia, he learned, had taken the car to the garage to fill up and Leslie had accompanied her. “With consummate tact, I said I should prefer to be dropped here to wait for you,” explained Fayre. “Heaven knows how much more time they’ll have together. It strikes me as a black outlook, Edward.” His kindly face was grave and troubled. Kean nodded. “I haven’t been able to get much out of Miss Allen. She is convinced that Leslie had nothing to do with it, and I believe she is right. All the same, his story is weak.” “It’s the most infernal bad luck! If only he’d gone up to London as he intended! What do you suppose induced poor Mrs. Draycott to go to the farm?” “If we knew that, Leslie could snap his fingers at them,” answered Kean sombrely. He pulled out his handkerchief from his pocket as he spoke, and a small red stylographic pen came with it and rolled on the floor at Fayre’s feet. He picked it up and examined it. The cap was missing and, half concealed beneath the mud with which it was plastered, was an inkstain, running right round the pen. “Hullo! This is the fellow I picked up!” he exclaimed. Kean took it from him and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. “Our one clue,” he assented dryly. “And we shall probably trace that to one of the reporters. I don’t think we need build on it.” He pulled off his heavy coat and threw it over a chair. Then he turned and faced Fayre squarely. “I’m going to save that boy if I can, Hatter, if things go against him,” he said. “You can tell Cynthia that, if I don’t have an opportunity myself after the inquest. We’ll hope it won’t come to that, but, frankly, I’m not sanguine.” “Neither am I. It looks almost as if suspicion had been deliberately thrown on Leslie. It’s an inconceivably devilish scheme, if it is so. There’s no earthly reason, as far as we know, why Mrs. Draycott should have gone to his farm at all, unless she were decoyed there, and, if she were, why choose that spot? Surely it would have been as easy to shoot the poor creature in the open. It looks uncommonly as if some one had tried to plant the murder on John Leslie.” Kean walked over to the window and stood there looking out, his hands deep in his pockets. “It hasn’t occurred to you,” he said slowly, “that whoever did it may have known that Leslie had been subpoenaed as a witness and was due in London on Tuesday. Remember, he should, by rights, have been in the train at the time Mrs. Draycott was killed. I don’t suppose he made any secret of the fact that he was going, and news travels fast in a small country place.” Fayre stared at him for a moment then, with a sudden look of comprehension: “By Jove! That narrows things down a bit! If there is anything in your theory, we shall find the man is some one who either lives in the neighbourhood or who was there for a time, at least, before the crime was committed.” Kean turned to him with a smile.