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seemed to have burned itself out temporarily, and he knew that it was futile to continue painting in this mood. It was merely exercising a craftsman’s skill; its only result could be competently executed but uninspired work. That dying fire of inspiration had been finally quenched by the lighting up of his old passion for detection, for in the very village of Yarham certain startling events had occurred. Those events constituted a mystery the solution of which promised to tax the powers of Anthony Vereker, amateur detective, to their limit. It was the first occasion, too, in his experience, on which he happened to be near the scene of a baffling crime at the time of its commission.
    Vereker had had his first introduction to the beauties of the Constable country during his investigations with Inspector Heather into the mysterious murder at Marston Manor. At the time, he had made up his mind to explore all this southern half of Suffolk in search of landscape subjects, and his lengthy stay at Yarham was the result of that decision. He had just fixed a date for his return to London, and had written to his friend Manuel Ricardo to meet him at Liverpool Street Station. That letter had suggested a mild celebration of his return to civilization after such a prolonged sojourn in the wilds of East Anglia.
    Fate had, however, decreed otherwise.
    The morning after he had posted that letter to Ricardo, Vereker was mildly interested at hearing of the strange disappearance from Yarham of two of its inhabitants, Mr. John Thurlow and Mr. Clarry Martin. He heard the news from Benjamin Easy, landlord of “The Walnut Tree” Inn, where he was staying. Always interested in village gossip, he had managed to elicit from Ben Easy, by very diplomatic questioning, the fact that the two men were reputedly rivals for the hand of the sprightly and charming Dawn Garford. Ben had imparted this information with such an air of profound secrecy, that Vereker was obliged to assume that he had been favoured with vastly important confidences. He tried hard to appear as if he felt highly honoured. Ben and he discussed the affair with the furtiveness of two conspirators, and as a result, Vereker gradually learned that Ben was convinced that Mr. Thurlow had eloped with Miss Garford, and that Clarry had gone back to London, where he lived and worked, a broken-hearted man!
    Early on Wednesday morning, however, the startling news of the discovery of the dead bodies of John Thurlow and Clarry Martin on the waste land at Cobbler’s Corner went round the village like wildfire. The attendant circumstances were so extraordinary, that it was not clear to anyone how the two men had really met their deaths. At a first and casual glance, it looked as if they had killed one another in a brief but deadly combat. John Thurlow’s skull had been smashed by a peculiar iron bar, called a fold-drift in this portion of the county of Suffolk. This bar lay near the outstretched hand of Clarry Martin, but not actually in his grasp. In John Thurlow’s right hand was a .45 army pattern Webley revolver, with one cartridge of the complement of six, discharged. The bullet had passed through Martin’s trapezius muscle, above the clavicle bone of the right shoulder. Even to a layman it was apparent that such a bullet wound could hardly have proved fatal. Other features about the bodies of the two men, not at first apparent to a casual eye, came to light subsequently on a closer examination by Doctor Cornard, and rendered the whole business more baffling than ever.
    The news of this amazing tragedy, apart from its overwhelming effect on the village of Yarham, seemed to galvanize the jaded Vereker into a feverish burst of activity. Rising from the breakfast table, at which he had just seated himself, he hurried round to the post office telephone box, and at once rang up his friend, Manuel Ricardo, who was as usual occupying Vereker’s flat in Fenton Street, London,