J. S. Fletcher

“ Now, my friend and I first heard of the murder while we were at York. In the newspapers that we read, there was an account of a conversation which took place in, I believe, Mr. Raven's coach-house, or some out-building, whither the dead man's body had been carried, between this old Mr. Cazalette and a police-inspector, regarding a certain metal tobacco-box found on Salter Quick's body. Now I give you my word that that news was the first intimation we had ever had that the Quicks were in England! ”

“ So my friend came down again, in his tourist capacity; put up at the same quarters, strolled about, fished a bit, botanized a bit, attended the adjourned inquest as a casual spectator, and—abstracted the tobacco-box under the very noses of the police! It's in that locker now," continued Baxter, with a laugh, pointing to a corner of the cabin, "and with it are the handkerchief, your old friend Mr. Cazalette's pocket-book——"
"Oh! your friend got that, too, did he?" I exclaimed. "I see!" ”

“ I remained silent awhile, reflecting.
"It's a very fortunate thing for both of you that you could, if necessary, prove your presence at York on the night of the murder," I remarked at last. "Your doings about the tobacco-box and the other things might otherwise wear a very suspicious look. As it is, I'm afraid the police would probably say—granted that they knew what you've just told us so frankly—that even if you and your French friend didn't murder Salter Quick and his brother, you were probably accessory to both murders. That's how it strikes me, anyway." ”

“ We were on that island several weeks, and from the time we were flung unceremoniously upon its miserable shores to the day we left it we never saw a sail nor a wisp of smoke from a steamer. And it may be that this, and our privations, made us still more birds of a feather than we were. Anyway, you, Middlebrook, know how men, thrown together in that way, will talk—nay, must talk unless they'd go mad!—talk about themselves and their doings and so on. ”

“ It means to put a man, or men, ashore, preferably on a desert island, leaving him, or them, to fend for himself, or themselves, as best he, or they, can! It may mean slow starvation—at best it means living on what you can pick up by your own ingenuity, on shell-fish and that sort of thing, even on edible sea-weed. ”

“ I answered.
"Well, that's a very easy point to settle, if it should ever come to it," he replied. "And I'll settle it, for your edification, just now. Noah and Salter Quick were done to death, one near Saltash, in Cornwall, the other near Alnwick, in Northumberland, several hundreds of miles apart, about the same hour of the same evening. Now, my friend and I, so far from being anywhere near either Saltash or Alnwick on that particular evening and night, spent them together at the North Eastern Railway Hotel at York. ”

“ My friend and I came back to England a little before that—with money in our pockets—we'd been very lucky in the East—and with a friend of ours, a Chinese gentleman, mind you, we decided to go in for a little profitable work of another sort, and to start out by lifting my concealed belongings up here. ”