Now, as I gazed fascinated, a certain token of some late human occupation there entered into my vision and set the brain of it reeling. I screeched out, and clung frantically to the chain. In an instant I was going upward, and in a little more the wholesome daylight came about me. “Swing!” cried the detective, bending at the crank; and he slipped in a block that held up the machinery. I obeyed, as well as my shaken nerves would let me; and in a little they had caught the rim of the bucket, and held it to the side while I stepped out. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me of the blood?” I gasped, wiping my wet forehead as I stood away. The inspector looked at me queerly. “Truth is, sir,” he said, “I never thought. We’d had to get him out, you see; and a nice job it was. What was left of it didn’t seem to matter.” Mr Shapter, with his eyes like grey agates, was holding my left hand in his left, his right placed sympathetically on my shoulder. “What was it, my boy?” he said. “A cave, sir,” I answered--“a scoop in the wall where he’d hidden--water and a cave like that other. And the shot in his head! My God! who fired it? My God, sir!” “An awful retribution,” he said. “But come, come--you are overwrought; and no wonder. Let us go back to the house--or into the open fields, if you prefer it; and Jannaway shall give us the story of his discovery, in good matter-of-fact reviving prose.” * * * * * * * * * The detective took from his pocket the letter which he had obtained from Mrs Dalston, and held it up to the light for our inspection. “Do you observe the water-mark, gentlemen--Nolans, the big North Hampshire paper mills? It was that first put me on the scent. Here was local-made foreign note-paper, asserted to have been received from Spain. He might, of course, have took some with him; but it wasn’t likely, was it, seeing as how the letter itself refers to the journey as unpremeditated, and him away from home, or wished it to be supposed so, at the time? Inference, that he’d wrote it here for a blind, and give it to be produced by Mrs D. in case of inquiry, while he himself dropped into hiding. “He was clever, and he knew a good deal--not the least of his knowledge that the game was threatening to be up with him--but the best of his sort make their slips. He’d made his, and it left me pretty convinced that he’d be found lying close somewheres about the neighbourhood, while the hunt ran abroad.