From his official friend he had gathered that once on the right side of Miss Hoode and his way was clear. As he drove he pondered. How to approach the woman? At any mention of the Press she would be bound to shy. Finally, he put the problem to one side. The news of John Hoode’s death had not moved him, save in the way of a passing amazement. Anthony had seen too much of death to shed tears over a man he had never known. And the Minister of Imperial Finance, brilliant though he had been, had never seized the affections of the people in the manner of a Joe Chamberlain. Passing through Halsemere, Anthony, muttering happily to himself: “Now, who _did_ kill Cock Robin?” was struck by a horrid thought. Suppose there should be no mystery! Suppose, as Hastings had suggested, that the murderer had already delivered himself. Then he dismissed the idea. A Cabinet Minister murdered without a mystery? Impossible! All the canons were against it. He took his car along at some speed. By ten minutes to eight he had reached the Bear and Key in Marling High Street, demanded a room and breakfast, and had been led upstairs by a garrulous landlord. 2 Bathed, shaved, freshly-clothed and full of breakfast, Anthony uncurled his thin length from the best chair in the inn’s parlour, lit his pipe, and sought the garden. Outside the door he encountered the landlord, made inquiry as to the shortest way to Abbotshall, and, placidly puffing at his pipe, watched with enjoyment the effect of his question. The eyes of Mr. Josiah Syme flashed with the fire of curiosity. “’Scuse me, sir,” he wheezed, “but ’ave you come down along o’ this—along o’ these _’appenings_ up at the ’ouse?” “Hardly,” said Anthony. Mr. Syme tried again. “Be you a ’tective, sir?” he asked in a conspiratorial wheeze. “If so, Joe Syme might be able to ’elp ye.” He leant forward and added in yet a lower whisper: “My eldest gel, she’s an ’ousemaid up along at Abbotshall.” “Is she indeed,” said Anthony. “Wait here till I get my hat; then we’ll walk along together. You can show me the way.” “Then—then—you are a ’tective, sir.” “What exactly I am,” said Anthony, “God Himself may know. I do not. But you can make five pounds if you want it.” Mr. Syme understood enough. As they walked, first along the white road, then through fields and finally along the bank of that rushing, fussy, barely twenty-yards wide little river, the Marle, Mr. Syme told what he knew. Purged of repetitions, biographical meanderings, and excursions into rustic theorising, the story was this. Soon after eleven on the night before, Miss Laura Hoode had entered her brother’s study and found him lying, dead and mutilated, on the hearth. Exactly what the wounds were, Mr. Syme could not say; but by common report they were sufficiently horrible.