there, goes into town at irregular times but generally every day, and
is reputed to be devilish hard to get money out of. Finally I made the
acquaintance of an old fellow who used to do a day's gardening at
Brookbend occasionally. He has a cottage and a garden of his own with
a greenhouse, and the business cost me the price of a pound of
tomatoes."

"Was it--a profitable investment?"

"As tomatoes, yes; as information, no. The old fellow had the fatal
disadvantage from our point of view of labouring under a grievance. A
few weeks ago Creake told him that he would not require him again as
he was going to do his own gardening in future."

"That is something, Louis."

"If only Creake was going to poison his wife with hyoscyamine and bury
her, instead of blowing her up with a dynamite cartridge and claiming
that it came in among the coal."

"True, true. Still--"

"However, the chatty old soul had a simple explanation for everything
that Creake did. Creake was mad. He had even seen him flying a kite in
his garden where it was found to get wrecked among the trees. A lad of
ten would have known better, he declared. And certainly the kite did
get wrecked, for I saw it hanging over the road myself. But that a
sane man should spend his time 'playing with a toy' was beyond him."

"A good many men have been flying kites of various kinds lately," said