At night when the shallow-pated and ambitious policeman, as Earl Verner called him, was smoking his pipe over his own fire, and relating the incidents of the day to his admiring wife, an assistant in the shop of the leading gunsmith of the place knocked at the door and wished to see the superintendent privately and on particular business. “I come as an act of duty,” said the young man, “although I know I shall lose my place by it, for the master dared and forbade me to come to you.” “Yes,” said the officer, shutting the door of his private office, and taking his seat at his desk beneath a long row of handcuffs and cutlasses. “Captain Hammerton bought two pistols at our shop to-day.” “Yes,” said the officer, writing down the words, the name of the assistant, the name of the master, &c. “A revolver, and an ordinary pistol.” “Yes, go on; I will not interrupt you, tell your own story.” “He bought the ordinary one because it attracted his fancy--the stock was peculiar. The revolver, he said, he wanted to take to India with him, and he was going to London in the morning.” “Going to London in the morning; yes,” said the officer, writing industriously. “He bought bullets and powder.” “Yes,” said the officer. “That is all; hearing what I did about the inquest, I though it right in the interest of justice that you should know this.” “Quite right; did he take the pistols with him?” “No; we were to send them by Lord Verner’s groom when he passed with the letters.” “Oh!” said the officer, “that alters the case. When did the groom call?” “Not until this morning.” “What the deuce is the good of that?” said the officer angrily; for he was greatly disappointed. He had hoped that the next moment when he should produce the pistol found in the ruins, the gunsmith’s assistant would identify it. “That will do--thank you all the same, though there is nothing much in it; however it _may_ be useful; if so you shall hear from me again.” When the officious apprentice had gone, the Brazencrook chief leaned back in his chair and soliloquised. “It shows he was thinking of pistols, at any rate--that is something; he had deadly weapons in his mind. Not much in that perhaps, being a soldier, but put this and that together. And then about going to London to-day. Ha! I must get at that point. I’m morally certain he killed the man, and Lady Verner knows something about it. There was a quarrel, something about her perhaps; she is pretty and young, and----” Another knock at the door, and enter a gentleman whom we have seen before, though a stranger to the chief of the Brazencrook police--Mr. Bales from Scotland Yard. The Brazencrook officer was delighted to receive so distinguished a visitor.