“It’s a queer thing,” he said, “but a couple of days or so before this Mr. Tovey was murdered, I was polishing the glasses behind the bar in this very room, when I looked out of the window and sees a sailor, big chap he was, walking past. I didn’t rightly catch sight of his face, but he was carrying a bag and going towards London. Looked as if he was on the tramp, I thought. I never thought about it again till I sees the police advertising for this sailor chap, then, of course, I tells the constable at the Police Station up the village. I never heard whether they traced him or not.” “You didn’t notice if he had a black beard or a scar?” suggested Mr. Ludgrove mildly. “No, I didn’t see his face,” replied the landlord, with an air of a man brushing aside an irrelevant detail. “But that’s just like the police. You give ’em a bit of valuable information, and they hardly ever says thank you for it.” The landlord, warming to his work, and finding Mr. Ludgrove an excellent listener, developed theory after theory, each more far-fetched than the last. It was not until the clock pointed to closing time, that he rose from his chair with evident reluctance. “You mark my words, there’s more in it than meets the eye,” he said darkly, as he leant over the table, “as my old dad, what kept this house afore I did, used to say, if there’s anything you can’t rightly understand, there’s bound to be a woman in it. Look at the things what you sees in the papers every week. How do you know that these two poor chaps as were killed wasn’t both running after the same woman? And if she was married couldn’t ’er ’usband tell you something about why they was murdered? You think it over, sir, when you gets back to London.” And the landlord, nodding his head with an air of superlative wisdom, disappeared in the direction of the tap-room. By the time he returned, Mr. Ludgrove had collected his belongings and retired to bed. By the following morning the rain had ceased, and Mr. Ludgrove was enabled to pursue his explorations in comfort. He went out directly after breakfast and returned to the Inn in time for lunch. In the afternoon he followed a different direction, arriving back shortly after dark. When he repaired to the smoking-room after supper, he found that his fame as a personal acquaintance of the murdered men had preceded him. Mr. Ludgrove was before all things a student of human nature, and he seemed almost to enjoy taking part with the leading men of Penderworth in an interminable discussion of the unsolved crimes. Perhaps he reflected that the looker-on sees most of the game, and that these men, viewing the circumstances from a distance, might have hit upon some point in the evidence which had escaped the observers on the spot.