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The hearty looking landlord caught the glances of the crime specialist, and smiled.

“My customers are a fragile lot,” said he in a low voice. “The inns get only that kind in the winter,” as though in explanation, “and some of them are worse than these. It’s the air that does it.”

“Makes them ill?” smiled Ashton-Kirk.

“Bless you, no!” The landlord placed a broad hand to his mouth to restrain the great responsive laugh which seemed struggling in his chest. “The air does ’em good, so the doctors say. Well, anyway,” his humorous eyes twinkling, “it does me good by getting me over the slow season. If it wasn’t for them, I’d have to close up after September’s done.”

Scanlon ordered some cigars and coffee, and as the host moved away to procure these, he said:

“The doctors are a great lot, eh? Once they piled all the high-coloured drugs into you that you’d hold; and now they talk fresh air until you’d almost believe you could live on that alone. There’s one old codger who’s got a pet patient here—some sort of a rare and costly complaint, I believe—and he insists on fresh air at all stages of the game. The patient, it seems, likes an occasional change; but the doc. is as deaf as a post to everything except the sighing of the wind.”