"Young and fair, with an easy assurance and manner. He had taken a house in Park Road--name of Walters. There is a kind of annex to the house that at one time had been used for a billiard-room, and this was to be his office. I called upon the gentleman there by appointment. I didn't go into the house proper, but I saw that the blinds and curtains were up. The gentleman gave me a L5 note and asked me to go to the Inland Revenue Office here and get a L2 10_s._ stamp on a skin of parchment. When I got back he dictated a deed to me which I copied down for him." "Do you recollect what it was about?" Field asked. "Well, sir, I don't, except that it was some kind of assignment. The names I quite forget. You see, one gets to be rather like a machine doing that kind of work. The gentleman paid me seven shillings for my trouble and asked me to call upon him again." "And is that all you have to tell me?" Field asked. "Everything, Mr. Field," Acton said. "I hope that you will not think there is anything----" "Not so far as you are concerned, certainly," Field hastened to say. "I have only one more question to ask. Try and polish up your memory. Was there any date inserted in that deed?" "I can answer that question without the slightest hesitation. There was no date inserted in the deed." "'Um. The thing was so unusual that you were quite struck by the fact?" "Not at all. Dates are never inserted in engrossed deeds. They are left blank as to the day and the year. You see, there is so much delay in the law. Sometimes the deeds are not executed for months after they are signed. If the date was filled in and a delay of two months took place, a new stamp would have to be purchased, and that means dead loss. Whereas if the date is not put in till the deed is signed, that expense is saved." Field nodded his head in the manner of a man who is getting satisfaction for his trouble. "Then the date was no doing of yours," he said. "I fancy I'll run around and see the young lawyer friend of yours. After that I may have to ask you to accompany me to town. There is nothing for you to do besides identifying your own handwriting. Don't go out till I come back." Field hurried off to Park Road where at length he found the house that he wanted. The curtains and blinds were up in the windows, but no amount of knocking seemed to arouse anybody inside. Not that Field was disappointed, for he had expected something like this. A few inquiries elicited the fact that the house was in the hands of Messrs. Porden & Co., down the street, and thither the inspector repaired. Nobody had taken the house, he gathered, though a few people had been after it. "Have you had anybody to-day?" Field asked. "I mean early to-day? A tall, fair man with pleasant manners who gave the name of Walters?"