Mr. Fransemmery stepped into a well-lighted, cosy sitting-room, and found himself staring at Blick. Blick smiled and nodded; he recognized the newcomer as the bland and spectacled gentleman who had acted as foreman of the jury at the recent inquest. Mr. Fransemmery, of course, knew who Blick was. He hesitated on the threshold. “If you’re talking business matters—” he suggested. “Not at all!” exclaimed Mrs. Braxfield. “This young gentleman—too young, I tell him, to have such a job as he has!—simply came to ask me what he calls a pertinent question about my evidence the other morning. I’m a very good-tempered woman, as you well know, Mr. Fransemmery, or I might have given his question another name, and called it impertinent! What do you think he wanted to know, Mr. Fransemmery? If I was certain that the man I saw on the hill-side the morning of the murder was Mr. John Harborough? The idea!” Blick, who looked very much at home in an easy chair, gave Mrs. Braxfield a whimsical glance. “Well, you haven’t told me yet if you were certain!” he said. Mrs. Braxfield bridled. “I’m not so old that I’ve lost the use of my eyes, my lad!” she exclaimed. “I can see as well as you can!—better, for anything I know.” “It was very early in the morning,” remarked Blick. “The light was uncertain—I’ve learned that there was a good deal of mist about on the hill-sides—Hobbs, the man who found Guy Markenmore’s body, says that about here it was very misty indeed that Tuesday morning——” “How does he know?” demanded Mrs. Braxfield sharply. “Was he about here at that time—four o’clock?” “He was about here an hour and a half later, and if it was misty at five-thirty it would be still more so at four-fifteen,” retorted Blick. “Now, if it was—as it was!—misty you might easily mistake one person for another, Mrs. Braxfield. And, at that time you referred to in your evidence, there was a man, closely resembling Mr. Harborough in height, build, and general appearance—I don’t refer to facial resemblance—who was somewhere in this immediate neighbourhood.” “What man?” asked Mrs. Braxfield suspiciously. “Baron von Eckhardstein,” said Blick. “That’s a fact!” Mrs. Braxfield turned to Mr. Fransemmery, who had been standing during the exchange of words, and pointed him to an easy chair, opposite that in which Blick sat. She took another, between the two men. “Oh!” she said. “So he was up here, was he? That foreign man, staying at Mrs. Tretheroe’s? Oh! Indeed! Well, I never saw him!—the man I saw was Mr. Harborough. To be sure, now to think of it, that foreigner is about Mr. Harborough’s height and figure.” “Now that you think of it again, don’t you think that you may have been mistaken?” suggested Blick. “Don’t you think that the man you saw may have been von Eckhardstein, and not Harborough? Come, now!”