"yes, there has certainly been foul play here as well as in the other room," said john brancker, after a brief examination of the strong room. "in the first place, the twelve hundred pounds are gone which mr. hazeldine fetched from london yesterday, and i have no doubt that there were cash and notes to the amount of three or four thousand pounds in the safe, which also seem to be missing. the exact sum i cannot, of course, tell till i have examined the books. of this safe mr. hazeldine himself always kept the key. the other safes in the cellar are under my charge. i must at once send a telegram to mr. avison, who is staying for a few days in paris on his way home."

"that's an ugly bruise, mr. brancker, just above your left eye," said the chief constable, gazing straight into the other's face.

"yes; it is the result of a little accident last night," answered john, indifferently. "a woman flung a stone at me. i suppose i shall be disfigured for a few days; but it might have been worse."

"if you will step this way for a moment, there is something i should like to ask you about," said mace, and with that he led the way to the inner office, dr. barton and sweet bringing up the rear. mace unlocked the door and they all went in. "can you explain how those marks came there?" asked the constable, pointing to the stains on the floor.

"good gracious, no!" cried john with a start. "i know no more about them than you do"--which was precisely the remark sweet had given utterance to. "and there are more marks outside my drawer! what can it all mean?"

"it may, perhaps, be as well to open the drawer, if you have the key about you."

john produced his bunch of keys at once. "this is the one," he said, handing the bunch to mace. "perhaps you had better open the drawer yourself."

the constable took the key and opened the drawer. the books and papers were marked here and there with drops of blood. john stared as he had never stared before. "someone has been here to a certainty," he said. "the books and papers have been disturbed, and as for those stains----" he was too agitated to say more.

"and yet the lock does not seem to have been tampered with," said mace, with his keen eyes again fixed on john's face.

"it's all a mystery, and i can throw no light on it whatever," answered the latter.

"can you call to mind the last occasion of your having to open the drawer?"

"it was when i put my papers away last evening before leaving; that would be sometime between eight and nine o'clock."

"then you did not open the drawer when you came back to the bank at half-past ten?"

"certainly not. i had no occasion to do so. i did not even light the gas, but searched for and found my umbrella in the dark. i was not more than two minutes in the office."

"i shall have to keep this office locked up till the jury have visited it," said mace. "i have no doubt the coroner will be able to sit this afternoon."

john looked at him for a moment as though he hardly understood his meaning; then following mace's lead, they all left the office, the door of which was carefully re-locked. they had just got back to the other office when clement hazeldine rushed in, white and breathless.

although lame, ephraim judd, with the assistance of his stick, could get over the ground as quickly as most people, and it did not take him many minutes to reach clement hazeldine's door. clem lodged with the widow of the practitioner to whose business he had succeeded. he was still in bed when ephraim knocked, having been attending a patient till four a.m.; but the summons sent upstairs was so peremptory that he lost no time in coming down. in what words ephraim told his terrible tidings he never afterwards knew; it is sufficient that they were told.

"what about your brother?" asked ephraim, as soon as clement seemed in some measure to be recovering from the shock. "ought he not to know as soon as possible?"

"will you please go and tell him, mr. judd, while i go down to the bank? there's my mother and sister, too; but edward must break the news to them. it seems impossible that it can be true--impossible to. think that i shall never see my poor father alive again! what wretch's hand has done this deed?"

beecham, the suburb of ashdown, where edward hazeldine lived, was a clear mile and a half away. ephraim would have hired a fly, but there was none to be had at that early hour. he was far from being easy in his mind as he walked along. it was almost a certainty that during his absence mr. mace would discover the blood-stains on the office floor, and ephraim felt terribly afraid lest, by some means or other, they should be traced back to him. he did not well see how they could be, but his conscience made a coward of him. he had taken away the knife that had cut his hand, and it was now locked up in his trunk at home, while the cut itself, although it had bled a good deal at the time, had not proved a severe one. it was in the palm of the hand, and he had covered it with a little gold-beater's skin to keep the air out. he made a mental note that on no account must mr. mace's eyes be permitted to discover the wound.

edward hazeldine was an early riser. while breakfasting, he made a point of running through his correspondence. it was a saving of valuable time. he had just sat down to table with his heap of letters before him when mr. judd was announced. edward, who knew that ephraim was employed at the bank, leaped in a moment to the conclusion that his visitor could only be the bearer of ill news, and one glance at the latter's grave face was enough to assure him that such was the case.

"my father--what is amiss?" he said, as he started to his feet.

then ephraim had to break the same news to him that he had already broken to his brother. edward's face blanched, and his eyes filled with horror as the tale was told.

"my father murdered!--he who never harmed a creature in his life."

then he bowed his head on his hands, and there was silence in the room for a little while.

but edward hazeldine was a man of action; to sit still for any length of time was for him next to an impossibility. presently he lifted his head, wiped his eyes, and rang the bell. to the servant who came in, he said:

"order the mare to be put into the dog-cart and brought round as quickly as possible." then to ephraim: "we will drive over to the bank together as soon as i have given certain instructions to my clerk."

left alone for a few minutes, ephraim glanced with curiosity round the handsomely furnished room. he had never been inside edward hazeldine's house before. then his eyes wandered to the breakfast tray, and the little heap of post-letters lying beside it. as has been said already, other people's letters always had an irresistible fascination for mr. judd. if he could not see the inside of a letter, he would rather see the outside than not see it at all. his long, thin fingers shut and opened automatically. he half rose from his chair, and one hand went out towards the table. his big ears were on the alert for the slightest sound. another moment and the letters were in his hands.

he ran them quickly through, noting the post-mark of each, and the handwriting of the addresses. evidently they were chiefly business communications. but over one of them he paused, looking at it this way and that some half-dozen times.

"i could almost swear that this was the poor governor's hand, only disguised a bit," he muttered. "posted in london yesterday, too! that 't' is certainly his, and so is that 'h.' it's his writing, i would wager anything. now, what could he possibly have to write mr. edward about yesterday that he could not tell him to-day? i would give something to know what's inside."

but at this juncture he heard edward hazeldine's firm, heavy tread outside. the letters were replaced on the table, and three minutes later the two men were on their way to the bank.

edward hazeldine got back home about two o'clock. never would he be able to forget what he had gone through that forenoon. on him, as the elder son, had devolved the duty of breaking the tragic news to his mother and sister. mrs. hazeldine had fainted and fanny had gone into hysterics. the scene had tried him almost beyond endurance.

the jury had been summoned for three o'clock that afternoon. as edward could be of no further service at present, he had made his escape. he fervently hoped that the coroner would not think it needful to call him as a witness. everything at present was conjecture and vague surmise. so far, the police seemed to be without any clue to the perpetrator of the crime.

edward had not been home more than a few minutes when lord elstree was announced.

his lordship was one of two sleeping partners in the brewery, having about ten thousand pounds invested in the concern. he was on excellent terms with edward, of whose business abilities he had a very high opinion. his home for three parts of the year was at seaham lodge, a splendid property some four or five miles from beecham. his family were all grown up; the daughters married and the sons out in the world; but with himself and his wife, as companion to her ladyship, there lived a distant kinswoman, miss winterton by name, whom edward hazeldine had secretly made up his mind to win for his wife, if it were anyhow possible for him to do so. miss winterton was thirty years old, and plain looking, but accomplished and amiable; and had, moreover, a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds in her own right. edward, who had frequent occasion to visit the lodge on matters of business, and who was generally asked to stay for luncheon or dinner, as the case might be, had as yet ventured to whisper no word of love in miss winterton's ear; but there may have been that in his looks and manner which afforded her some inkling of the state of affairs. if such were the case, her treatment of edward was not of a kind to lead him to fear that when the time should have come for him to urge his suit, he would be very hardly treated. he told himself that he would wait till after christmas; till the year's balance at the brewery should have been struck. business was going up by "leaps and bounds," and he wanted to secure not merely miss winterton's approval of his suit, but the earl's as well, and he knew that nothing would put the latter into such a good humor as the assurance of a thumping dividend on his investment in the brewery.

"my dear hazeldine, what is this terrible rumor that has just reached my ears?" said his lordship, as he came hurriedly into the room and held out his hand to the other. "surely, surely there can be no truth in it!"

he was a short, podgy, sandy-haired man, with a fresh complexion and a tip-tilted nose, and looked far more like a retired tradesman than a "belted earl." in one respect, indeed, he would have made a first-rate tradesman; in him the commercial instinct was very strongly developed, and half his time was given to the consideration of schemes by means of which his large income might be made larger still.

"my father was murdered last night, if that is the rumor to which your lordship refers," answered edward, with a little break in his voice.

the earl sat down and stared at the other for a full half minute without speaking. then he said, "if not too painful to you, i should like you to tell me such particulars of the affair as are already known."

this edward proceeded to do as briefly as possible.

"it is terrible--terrible!" ejaculated the earl. "i need scarcely say, my dear hazeldine, that you have my most unfeigned sympathy--both you and your mother--in this dreadful affliction. how little we know what a day--nay, an hour--may bring forth!" the earl had a habit of indulging in mild platitudes, which he enunciated with an air of profundity which almost lent them a touch of freshness. "i left home the bearer of an invitation to you to dine at the lodge to-morrow, but that, of course, is now out of the question. it will be agnes's birthday"--agnes was miss winterton--"so her ladyship is going to ask a quiet half-dozen to dinner, and you were to have been of the number."

a glow of satisfaction burnt for a moment in edward hazeldine's cheeks. even at a time like the present he could not help feeling a keen sense of gratification that his name should have been remembered on such an occasion. might he not accept it, he asked himself, as an augury of the good fortune that would attend him when the time should have come for him to put to miss winterton a certain momentous question?

as soon as the earl had gone, edward's eyes fell on the heap of unopened letters left there from morning. business must go on whatever happens, and it was with a sense of relief that he endeavored to bring his mind back for a time to the commonplace details of everyday life. he took up the letters one by one, opened them, read them, and his mind took in their contents automatically, but his real mind was back at the bank--he was gazing again on that ghastly, upturned face, on those sightless eyes into which no light of recognition would ever flash more. only last night he had been sitting by his father's side, worrying him about the details of a paltry debt of twenty pounds, hardly noticing how ill and careworn he looked, parting from him in his usual off-hand, careless fashion; only last night--and now!

there was one letter still left unopened. he took it up and looked first at the address, as he always made a point of doing. there was a familiar look about the writing, and yet he could not call to mind whose it was. without more ado he tore open the envelope, and then he saw in a moment that the letter inside was in his father's writing. he was startled, to say the least. his father had not written to him since he was a schoolboy, unless it was now and then two lines of invitation to dinner, or on some equally trivial matter. what could he possibly have to say to him now? before beginning to read the letter, he took up the envelope again and saw that it bore the london post-mark of the day before; then he turned to the signature as if to make sure that it really was his father's writing. then he drew his chair a little nearer the window and began to read.