He did not go to one of the old hostelries where visitors might have become curious and friendly. He took humble lodgings at the house of a retired Metropolitan police constable who might be relied upon to keep his mouth shut in any circumstances. Also it is regrettable to record that Labar's first night in town was spent in the cheaper kind of four ale bars in the society of local shop assistants, shepherds, and watermen. They found the gentleman from London, whose name it was disclosed was James May, an hospitable and genial person with a thirst for information about the districts that lie north-east of Rye which was not easily assuaged. It was six o'clock the next morning when an unshaven man clad in a rough old suit of Harris tweeds, who might have been a tramp or a naturalist set out through the old town gate in the general direction of Folkestone. A burly man in a decrepit Ford car passed him just outside the Ypres Tower. It was Malone also setting out on the search for a needle in a haystack. No sign of recognition passed between the two men. Labar trudged on and in the course of the next hour was overtaken by an early charabanc on its way to Folkestone. He stopped it and bought a lift for half a dozen miles or so. He had no fixed plan. If anything came of this excursion luck would have to be with him. Away on his right he could see mile after mile of flat country cut into patterns by a complicated series of dykes, and save for a rare farmhouse or cottage almost void of any indication of human inhabitants. At a point which he had marked on a small pocket map he descended. He was some few miles from Lydd, but across the wide stretches of marsh and cornland there was only one low and inconspicuous building which a weather-beaten sign announced as an inn, "Licensed to sell by retail wines, spirits, beer and tobacco." How it might find sufficient customers to support it in that forsaken region Labar did not stop to inquire. He had already had breakfast, but that was two hours agone and an able-bodied detective can always support two breakfasts in the course of his duty. Anyway it was too early in the day for any other pretext to serve. An old, old man pottering about the garden was very dubious. The inn did not lay itself out much for early meals. However if mister could put up with tea and eggs he would consult his wife as to what might be done. Tea and eggs it appeared were the very things for which the wayfarer had an inordinate craving. He was afforded a seat in the one bare public room that the inn boasted, while an old lady with crinkled cheeks began to fussily spread a somewhat stained cloth, and to issue instructions to the old man who was boiling the eggs in the adjoining room. "A lonely neighbourhood this," observed the inspector idly.