“Then from all you know, and I refer to more than his ability as a gardener, do you think it would be a good thing to take him on?”

“Why do you put it that way, sir?”

“I leave that to you. The matter may be more important than one can realize—as yet.” He lingered a little over the last words.

“Then, yes, sir, if you want a garden like Mr. Millicent’s.”

The shrewdness of the answer took him aback. “Send him in,” he said shortly.

The man entered, the man whose dark features had peered through the parted curtains a short hour before. He was powerfully built, very broad, and dressed in loose and much worn tweeds of a foreign cut. He came forward with the lurching walk of a seafaring trade, a colored handkerchief twisted round the column of his brown neck. His swinging hands were wide and knotted, and every motion spoke of great physical strength. No mere Sussex gardener this, who had spent his placid years among his roses and dahlias, but one who carried with him nameless suggestions of the jungle and the faint pounding of distant surf. Dangling his cap, he gave a sort of salute, making at the same time a swift survey of the room. From this furtive and searching glance it seemed to Derrick that the man missed something he knew of old in Millicent’s time, but no flicker of change of expression could be discerned on the weather-beaten face. The face itself was neither cruel nor merciless but conveyed a grim, implacable resolution. Here, reflected Derrick, was the man who disappeared three days after Millicent’s death. What brought him back now?

“What is your name?”

“Martin, sir, John Martin.” The voice was deep and husky.

“Perkins tells me you were in Mr. Millicent’s service.”

“Yes, sir, for some years after his last trip to the East.”

“Did you come from the East with him?”

“No, sir, I—I was engaged here at Beech Lodge.”

“Several years service, yet you left three days after your employer died?”

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