He did not see any of the servants about and he stood in the yard, pondering over his problem. Then his glance fell on the old well, and it instantly occurred to him that here was the very kind of place he was seeking. There was an old wheel pump beside it, rusty and dilapidated, working a rod to the plunger below. He imagined the well was not used, for on his last visit he had noticed a well-oiled force pump a hundred yards away at the kitchen door. The well was surrounded by a masonry wall about three feet high, coped with roughly dressed stones. On the coping was a flat wooden grating, old and decaying. Ivy covered about half of the wall and grating. French crossed the yard and, leaning over the wall, glanced down. The sides were black with age and he could distinguish no details of the walls, but there was a tiny reflection from the water far below. Then suddenly he noticed a thing which once again set him off into a ferment of delight. The cross-bars of the grating were secured by mortar into niches cut in the stone. All of these bore signs of recent movement. Satisfied that he had at last solved his problem, French quietly left the yard and, recovering his bicycle, rode back to the police station at Ashburton. “I want your help, Sergeant,” he said as Daw came forward. “Can you get some things together and come out with me to Colonel Domlio’s to-night?” “Of course, Mr. French.” “Good. Then I want a strong fishing-line and some hooks and some twenty-five or thirty yards of strong cord. I should like also a candle-burning lantern and, of course, your electric torch. I want to try an experiment.” “I’ll have all those ready.” “I want to be there when there’s no one about, so, as the Colonel sits up very late, I think we’ll say three o’clock. That means we ought to leave here about one-fifteen. Can you borrow a second bicycle?” The sergeant looked completely mystified by these instructions, but he answered, “Certainly,” without asking any questions. It was agreed that they should meet in the evening at his house, sitting up there until it was time to start. Having explained at the hotel that he had to go to Plymouth and would be away all night, French started out for a tramp on the moor. About eleven he turned up at Daw’s cottage, and there the two men spent the next couple of hours smoking and chatting. Shortly before three they reached Torview. They hid their bicycles in the brushwood and walked softly up the back drive to the yard. The night was fine and calm, but the sky was overcast and it was very dark. Not a sound broke the stillness. Silently they reached the well, and French, with his electric torch, examined the wooden cover. “I think if we lift together we can get it up,” he whispered. “Try at this side and use the ivy as a hinge.” They raised it easily and French propped it with a billet of wood. “Now, Sergeant, the fishing line.”