Everard Myatt — or Catherton Hunt — was lost again. Martin Hewitt had been wholly successful, for he had recovered Mr. Bell’s missing bonds; but the police caught neither of the conspirators. Investigation at Henning’s lodgings showed that careful preparations must have been made for an immediate flight if it should become necessary, and the flight had taken place. The man in the hospital, who had been knocked down in carrying from one to the other the extraordinary message that Hewitt deciphered, remained insensible for a few days, and could not be questioned till some time later still. Then he professed to have forgotten all about the message on which he was going when he met his accident, and the medical men in attendance informed the police that it was quite possible that the fellow’s statement was true. He said that he did carry messages sometimes, when he could get a job, but he could remember nothing of the message of the key, nor of who had sent him, nor where he was to go. Nevertheless, the police, although they professed to accept his statement, kept a wary eye on him after his discharge from the hospital, for they had a very great suspicion that he knew more than he chose to tell. But nothing more was heard of the accomplices till another case of Martin Hewitt’s brought the news, and that in a manner strange enough.

The matter began, as so many matters of Hewitt’s did, with the receipt of a telegram, followed immediately by another. For the first having been handed in at a country office not very long before eight the previous evening, it was not delivered at Hewitt’s office till the morning, in accordance with the ancient manners and customs observed in the telegraphic system of this country. It had been despatched from Throckham, in Middlesex, and it was simply a very urgently worded request to Hewitt to come at once, signed “Claire Peytral.” The second telegram, which came even as Hewitt was reading the first, on his arrival at his office, ran thus:—

“Did you receive telegram? See newspapers. Matter life or death. Would come personally but cannot leave mother. Pray answer. — Peytral.”

The answer went instantly that Hewitt would come by the next train, for he had seen the morning paper and from that knew the urgency of the case. But a consultation of the railway guide showed that trains to Throckham were fewer than one might suppose, considering the proximity of the village to London, and that the next would leave in about an hour and a quarter; so that I saw Hewitt before he started. He came up to my rooms, in fact, as I was beginning to breakfast.

“See here,” he said, “I am sent for in the Throckham case. Have you seen the report?”

As a leader writer, I had little business with the news side of my paper, and indeed I had no more than a vague recollection of some such heading as: “Tragedy in a............