"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.