“We can leave the police to do their own work,” he remarked, motioning us to be seated at a convenient table.  “My impression is that they’ll find little out from the servants.  And while that’s afoot, I’d like to have that promised story of yours, Mr. Elphinstone—­I only got an idea of it, you know, when you and Murray came to my house.  And these two would like to hear it—­one of them, at any rate, is more interested in this affair than you’d think or than he knew of himself until recently.”

Now that we were in a properly lighted room, I took a more careful look at the former steward of Hathercleugh.  He was a well-preserved, shrewd-looking man of between sixty and seventy:  quiet and observant, the sort of man that you could see would think a lot without saying much.  He smiled a little as he put his hands together on the table and glanced at our expectant faces—­it was just the smile of a man who knows what he is talking about.

“Aye, well, Mr. Lindsey,” he responded, “maybe there’s not so much mystery in this affair as there seems to be once you’ve got at an idea.  I’ll tell you how I got at mine and what’s come of it.  Of course, you’ll not know, for I think you didn’t come to Berwick yourself until after I’d left the neighbourhood—­but I was connected with the Hathercleugh estate from the time I was a lad until fifteen years ago, when I gave up the steward’s job and went to live on a bit of property of my own, near Alnwick.  Of course, I knew the two sons—­Michael and Gilbert; and I remember well enough when, owing to perpetual quarrelling with their father, he gave them both a good lot of money and they went their several ways.  And after that, neither ever came back that I heard of, nor did I ever come across either, except on one occasion—­to which I’ll refer in due course.  In time, as I’ve just said, I retired; in time, too, Sir Alexander died, and I heard that, Mr. Michael being dead in the West Indies, Sir Gilbert had come into the title and estates.  I did think, once or twice, of coming over to see him; but the older a man gets, the fonder he is of his own fireside—­and I didn’t come here, nor did I ever hear much of him; he certainly made no attempt to see me.  And so we come to the beginning of what we’ll call the present crisis.  That beginning came with the man who turned up in Berwick this spring.”

“You mean Gilverthwaite?” asked Mr. Lindsey.

“Aye—­but I didn’t know him by that name!” assented Mr. Elphinstone, with a sly smile.  “I didn’t know him by any name.  What I know is this.  It must have been about a week—­certainly not more—­before Gilverthwaite’s death that he—­I’m sure of his identity, because of his description—­called on me at my house, and with a good deal of hinting and such-like told me that he was a private inquiry agent, and could I tell him something about the late Michael Carstairs?—­and that, it turned out, was:  Did I know if Michael was married before he left England, and if so, where, and to whom?