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was a longish drive, mostly through narrow, muddy lanes. At last, on the outskirts of a village through which ran a little stream, we pulled up. A constable was standing outside a barnlike structure, separated by a small meadow, from the nearest cottage. He was a sinister-looking man who harmonised with his surroundings and whose jet-black eyebrows joined in the middle to form one continuous whole. He saluted as we stepped down, unlocked the barn door and led the way in. In spite of the disheartening weather a group of idlers hung about staring vacantly at the gloomy building.
    “Not a pleasant sight, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire warned us as he removed a sheet from something which lay upon a trestle table.
    It was the body of a man wearing a tweed jacket and open-neck shirt, flannel trousers and thick-soled shoes: the equipment, I thought, of a hiker. All his garments—from which water dripped—were horribly stained with blood, and his face was characterised by an unnatural pallor.
    I checked an exclamation of horror when I realised that he had died of a wound which appeared nearly to have severed his head from his body!
    “Right across the jugular,” Gallaho muttered, staring down savagely at the victim of this outrage.
    He began to chew vigorously, although as I learned later he used no gum; it was merely an unusual ruminatory habit.
    “Good God!” Nayland Smith whispered. “Good God! No doubt of the cause of death here! Thank you, Inspector. Cover the poor fellow up. The surgeon has seen him, of course?”
    “Yes. He estimated that he had been dead for six or seven hours. But I left him just as we found him for you to see.”
    “He was hauled out of the river, I’m told?”
    “Yes—half a mile from here. The body was jammed in under the branches of an overhanging willow.”
    “Who found it?”
    “A gipsy called Barnett who was gathering rushes. He and his family are basket makers.”
    “When was that?”
    “Ten-thirty, sir,” Inspector Derbyshire replied. “I got straight through to Inspector Gallaho; he arrived an hour later. Doctor Bridges saw the body at eleven.”
    “Why did you call Scotland Yard?”
    “I recognised him at once. He had reported to me yesterday morning—”
    “As I told you, sir,” Gallaho’s growling voice broke in, “he was a bit after your time at the Yard. But Detective Sergeant Hythe was one of my most promising juniors. He was working under me. He was down here looking for the secret radio station. B.B.C. engineers had noticed interference from time to time and they finally narrowed it down to this end of Essex.”
    We came out of the barn and the constable locked the door behind us. Smith turned and stared at Gallaho.
    “It looks,” Gallaho added, “as though poor Hythe had got too near to the heart of the mystery.”
    “If you’ll just step across to the constable’s cottage, sir, I want you to see the few things that were found on the dead man,” said Inspector Derbyshire.
    As we walked along the narrow village street to the modest police headquarters the group of locals detached themselves from the barn and followed us at a discreet distance. Nayland Smith glanced back over his shoulder.
    “No one of interest there, Kerrigan!” he snapped.
    Laid out upon a table in the sitting room I saw a Colt automatic, an electric flashlamp and a Yale key.
    “There wasn’t another thing on him!” said Inspector Derbyshire. “Yet I know for a fact that he carried a knapsack and a stick. He was smoking a pipe, too; and he asked me for the name of a cottage where he could spend a night, quiet-like, in the neighbourhood.”
    Smith was staring at the exhibits.
    “This key,” he remarked, “is the most significant item.”
    “I spotted that,” growled Gallaho. “It’s the key of an A.A. call box—and the nearest is at the crossroads by Woldham Forges, a mile or so from here.”
    “Smart work,” snapped Smith. “What did this important discovery suggest to