booking-office. Examination of the time-table showed that no train arrived at or left Totnes between the hours of four p.m., when the Plymouth train arrived, and the five-fifteen up-train to Exeter and Taunton. There were several expresses, of course, Totnes being on the Great Western mainline between Plymouth and London.

By this fact, it seemed that the mysterious man whom I was to meet would already be in Totnes, and would come to the station to meet me. All day, therefore, my eyes were open for sight of a man wearing a red tie or a carnation in his coat. Mr Arnold had held suspicion that he might be watched. Why? What did he fear? I was not to approach him unless he unbuttoned his gloves and removed them. 

All that well-remembered day I idled by the cool rippling river, lingered by the rushing weir, watching the fishermen haul in their salmon-nets, and strolled about the quiet old-world streets of the rather sleepy place, eager for the arrival of five o'clock. 

The station being some distance from the town, I walked down to it about half-past four. The afternoon was blazing-hot, and scarcely anyone was astir; even the dogs were asleep in the shadows, and the heat-slumber was over everything. 

A hundred times had I tried to picture to myself what Mr Arthur Dawnay could be like. In the High Street earlier in the day, I had seen a young man in a tweed Norfolk jacket, obviously a tourist, wearing a red tie but no carnation and had followed him unnoticed to a house out on the outskirts of the town, where he was evidently lodging. Was his name Dawnay, I wondered? If he were actually the man whom I was to meet, then he certainly was a very prosaic looking person. 

Still, I possessed my soul in patience, and with the dead man's letter in my breast-pocket, I walked through the booking-office and onto the platform. Several persons were about--ordinary looking individuals, such as one sees every day at the station of a small provincial town but there was no man wearing either a red cravat or a carnation. 

I lit a cigarette and strolled up and down the platform where the booking-office was situated. The gate of the up-platform being kept locked, he would be compelled to pass through the booking-office. Twice expresses with ocean mails from Plymouth to London roared through, and slowly the hands of the big clock approached the hour of five. 

The appointment must have been made long ago by the man now dead--weeks ago, when he was 

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