“Won’t you sit down, sir?” cooed the inspector in his blandest tones. “I understand you have something to tell me?”

The visitor lowered himself into a chair, where he perched diffidently on the extreme edge.

“I—I really must apologize for troubling you in this way,” he began, “but I feel it my duty in the very peculiar circumstances—it is all most unusual, I have never had anything to do with the police before and—but my name has been mentioned—excuse me!”

His face was momentarily obscured by a large blue and white chequered handkerchief, while a sneeze exploded like a bomb in the quiet room.

“I beg your pardon,” resumed Mr. James when his face reappeared from its momentary eclipse. “A nasty cold—a very nasty cold. I shouldn’t really have travelled in this weather—my daughter tried to dissuade me, but I felt it my duty——”

This time the sneeze took him by surprise, and Mallett ducked hastily to avoid the resultant shower. So far the inspector had said nothing. Indeed he had only listened with half an ear to the disjointed utterances of the stranger. But his eyes had been busy, and his brain was mechanically registering what he saw, and checking and comparing it with what he had heard elsewhere. The first impression produced by Mr. James was one of great size. As he sat, uncomfortably far forward in his chair, his stomach protruded almost to the desk behind which the inspector sheltered. The impression of size was reinforced by the bushy brown beard that straggled over his chest. But above the beard there showed itself not the fat florid face that one might have been expecting from a man of such bulk, but a peaky little countenance, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. His limbs, too, were by comparison thin. One wondered how such inadequate legs could support the burden of his body. “He looks like a thin man badly made up to play Falstaff,” thought Mallett. He remembered Harper’s words: “A fat man—or rather, paunchy. He had a big stomach and a thin face, as if he had a bad digestion.”

Aloud he said: “Now let’s take this quietly, Mr.—James. That is your name, I think?”

The visitor plunged into a pocket and produced a grimy card. “That’s me,” he said.

The inspector read: “Colin James, 14 Market Street, Great Easington, Norfolk.” In the bottom left-hand corner were added the words: “Seed and Corn Merchant.”

“Well?” he asked. “What have you got to do with this affair?”

“That’s exactly it!” cried Mr. James. “What indeed? I’m a respectable man, sir, always have been. You can ask anybody in Easington, or for miles round—as far as Norwich if you like.”