"No!" exclaimed Brereton, startled out of his habitual composure. "What find?"
"Some of our people made a search there as soon as the police-court proceedings were over," replied the detective. "It was the first chance they'd had of doing anything systematically. They found the bank-notes which Kitely got at the Bank yesterday evening, and a quantity of letters and papers that we presume had been in that empty pocket-book. They were all hidden in a hole in the thatch of Harborough's shed."
"Where are they?" asked Brereton.
"Down at the police-station—the superintendent has them," answered the detective. "He'd show you them, sir, if you care to go down."
Brereton went off to the police-station at once and was shown into the superintendent's office without delay. That official immediately drew open a drawer of his desk and produced a packet folded in brown paper.
"I suppose this is what you want to see, Mr. Brereton," he said. "I guess you've heard about the discovery? Shoved away in a rat-hole in the thatch of Harborough's shed these were, sir—upon my honour, I don't know what to make of it! You'd have thought that a man of Harborough's sense and cleverness would never have put these things there, where they were certain to be found."
"I don't believe Harborough did put them there," said Brereton. "But what are they?"
The superintendent motioned his visitor to sit by him and then opened the papers out on his desk.
"Not so much," he answered. "Three five-pound notes—I've proved that they're those which poor Kitely got at the bank yesterday. A number of letters—chiefly about old books, antiquarian matters, and so forth—some scraps of newspaper cuttings, of the same nature. And this bit of a memorandum book, that fits that empty pocket-book we found, with pencil entries in it—naught of any importance. Look 'em over, if you like, Mr. Brereton. I make nothing out of 'em."
Brereton made nothing out either, at first glance. The papers were just what the superintendent described them to be, and he went rapidly through them without finding anything particularly worthy of notice. But to the little memorandum book he gave more attention, especially to the recent entries. And one of these, made within the last three months, struck him as soon as he looked at it, insignificant as it seemed to be. It was only of one line, and the one line was only of a few initials, an abbreviation or two, and a date: M. & C. v. S. B. cir. 81. And why this apparently innocent entry struck Brereton was because he was still thinking as an under-current to all this, of Mallalieu and Cotherstone—and M. and C. were certainly the initials of those not too common names.