lived at Mootley all my life, sir, although I was born here forty years ago. I went to London, and stopped in Southwark for years. I'd a greengrocer's shop there, and did fairly well. But London didn't suit my wife's health, sir, so I sold up some time back, and bought a cottage and an acre of land here with my savings. I know your name, sir, because I've seen one or two plays of yours at The Elephant and Castle Theatre. And very good plays they were, sir, too."

"Humph! It seems to me, Mr. Giles, that I am now the wrongly suspected hero of a much more mysterious and lurid melodrama than any I have written."

"It is strange," admitted Giles, with a side glance. I saw the glance by the light which gleamed from a cottage window.

"My murdering Mrs. Caldershaw?" I inquired coolly.

"We don't know yet that she has been murdered," he replied quickly.

"Then my stealing that glass eye of hers?"

"No, sir. But your being locked up in the dark with the corpse."

"She wasn't a corpse when I entered, Mr. Giles. Her moans attracted me into the room. While I was seeing by match-light what was the matter, someone locked the door, and bolted with my motor."

"The lady I saw, sir."

"No doubt, since I did not bring a lady with me."

"I wonder if she got the eye," muttered Giles half to himself.

"She must have got something that wasn't hers, else she would not have made use of my car to escape."

"Then she must have taken the eye," Giles muttered again.

"What the deuce are you talking about? Why should she steal a glass eye?"

"That's what I'd like to know, sir. It's an odd thing to steal. And I never knew that Mrs. Caldershaw's left eye was a glass one, though she told Mrs. Faith about it. Well, it's gone----"

"And the lady who stole my motor car took it. At least it seems so. But I tell you what, Mr. Giles, I'm too hungry to discuss the matter just now. The whole business is a mystery to me, and Destiny has dragged me into it in a most 

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