J. S. Fletcher

“ It doesn’t do to talk about anybody. But I suppose most of your investigations about this gentleman who’s missing are under the rose, eh?"
"Pretty much so," agreed Brixey. "It’s a first-class sort of mystery, anyhow, Mr. Willett."
"I believe you!" Said the bookseller. He opened a door, at the back of the shop, and remarking to some person within that he was going out for half an hour, put on his hat and motioned Brixey to follow him.
"We'll step round to Mr. Archington’s," he said, as they walked down the passage. "Talk there more quietly." ”

“ But I never believed it was for her, for I never saw a young woman look less anæmic in my life. And, to cut matters, short, I put that fiver safely away."
Archington glanced at Willett as he came to an end of his story, and the bookseller nudged Brixey's elbow.
"I've got a five-pound note from the same quarter, too," he said, "And I got it about the same time—last Wednesday. This same young woman came into my shop just before one o'clock. I did just know her for it's not so long since that I bought some old prints from her father. ”

“ There were several items relating to Selchester, and some of them were ticked off in pencil.
"‘Yes,' I said, 'I've some of these, but as you see, they're pretty expensive.' 'Oh, it doesn't matter!' she says. 'She's a wealthy lady—one of the customers where I worked in London—and she's sent me a five-pound note to lay out.' So I showed her what I had—Blenkinridge's 'History of Selchester' in two volumes, and Dean Dewberry’s 'Annals and Collections of Selchester Cathedral,' and Raycastle's 'Chartulary of Selchester Priory,' and one or two small things—they came to well over four pounds. ”

“ Then he pointed his visitors to two chairs which flanked the hearthrug, and turning to a sideboard, produced a bottle of sherry and silently filled three glasses, after which he took down a box of cigars from the mantelpiece and handed it round. ”