THE SALMON GAFF
I gave such a jump on hearing this that Chisholm himself started, and he stared at me with a question in his eyes. But I was quick enough to let him know that he was giving me news that I hadn't heard until he opened his lips.
"You don't tell me that!" I exclaimed. "What!—more of it?"
"Aye!" he said. "You'll be thinking that this is all of a piece with the other affair. And to be sure, they found Crone's body close by where you found yon other man—Phillips."
"Where, then?" I asked. "And when?"
"I tell you, not an hour ago," he replied. "The news just came in. I was going down here to see if any of the neighbours at the shop saw Crone in any strange company last night."
I hesitated for a second or two, and then spoke out.
"I saw him myself last night," said I. "I went to his shop—maybe it was nine o'clock—to buy some bits of stuff to make Tom Dunlop a door to his rabbit-hutch, and I was there talking to him ten minutes or so. He was all right then—and I saw nobody else with him."
"Aye, well, he never went home to his house last night," observed Chisholm. "I called in there on my way down—he lived, you know, in a cottage by the police-station, and I dropped in and asked the woman that keeps house for him had she seen him this morning, and she said he never came home last night at all. And no wonder—as things are!"
"But you were saying where it happened," I said.