“Rather! That was that particular man, too. When he turned away from the desk his coat swung against the corner and something heavy came an awful thump up against the wood. Lotty said: ‘Well, he’s got his little drop of comfort with him, anyway,’ meaning it sounded like a bottle. That was what she was laughing over at supper. She was always one for a joke and she’ll make one over anything.” “Well, thanks to you, I’ve got some idea what the chap was like and he may be the one my friend’s after. Page by name, tall and thin, with a bottle in his pocket! And if my friend can find him he may get the money for his broken lamp out of him! It doesn’t sound a hopeful prospect, does it! I’m deeply grateful to you, all the same. I wish everybody had a memory like yours!” “I’m sorry about that number,” she said regretfully. “It isn’t often I forget, but I must have been taken up with my sister.” Fayre rode back to Staveley very much divided in his mind between the mysterious Mr. Page and Gregg. Of the two, he was inclined to suspect the doctor, who seemed to be getting more and more involved in the whole business and for whose brains he had already conceived a wholesome respect. The other man was probably nothing but a harmless motorist who wanted his car badly enough to brave the weather and fetch it. He found Cynthia writing letters in the drawing-room and gave her a short account of his visit to the garage. She fastened onto the Page episode with an enthusiasm Fayre found pathetic. He told her frankly that he considered it of minor importance. “You must remember that there may have been any number of people fetching their cars from garages just about that time. It isn’t as if we’d been able to trace the number of the car. There is nothing except its size that answers to the carter’s description.” “Still, that’s about all we’ve got to go on anyway, Uncle Fayre, and the time does fit in. He could have gone round by Miss Allen’s and reached the farm just about the time the tramp saw him. I know, because I’ve done it in a car myself.” “And the bottle in his pocket was a revolver, I suppose?” laughed Fayre, knowing the disappointment that lay in store for her if the whole thing petered out and determined not to encourage her in a false hope. “Why not?” she said seriously. “And why did he keep his goggles down all the time? That woman was right: it _is_ unusual.” “All right, my dear, we’ll add him to our list of suspects; but I don’t quite see what we’re going to do about it.” “I do,” was Cynthia’s decisive answer. “I’m going to put the garages at Carlisle through a small sieve. I’ll bet he did stay there, if he was going south, and, if he did, he must have garaged the car.” “But I told you I’d drawn Carlisle the other day. It was hopeless.”