"No doubt about it at all. Most extraordinary eyes—too damned extraordinary by half!"
"Well," I said, "I am much indebted to you for your statement, and you may be confident that it will materially assist the investigation now in progress."
"Don't mention it," said Hines, airily. "If I can ever do anything else for you, just let me know; but—I mean to say I rely upon you not to bring me into it. You understand what I mean?"
"You may be absolutely certain," I replied, "that no hint of this occurrence will ever be made public so far as I am concerned."
I took my departure from Leeways Farm fully satisfied with the result of the first move in the plan of campaign upon which I had decided. Returning to my quarters at the Abbey Inn, I spent the greater part of the afternoon in writing a detailed account of my interview with Edward Hines. Having completed this, I set out for the town, as by posting my report there and not in the wayside box at Upper Crossleys I knew that I could count upon its delivery at New Scotland Yard by the first mail in the morning.
In leisurely fashion I performed the journey, for my next move could not be made until after dusk.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NUBIAN MUTE
I returned from the little market town beneath a sky of tropical brilliance. The landscape was bathed in a radiance of perfect moonlight, and under the trees which thickly lined the way, the shadows had a velvet quality rarely met with in England, their edges showing more sharply defined than I ever remembered to have noticed them before. But ere long I grew oblivious even of the beauty of the night, becoming absorbed in reflections respecting this most extraordinary case.