These sentences, evidently the ripened grain of many dark hours, took Gerald by surprise.

‘I don’t think it’s any good going away now, mother, at the last minute,’ he said, coldly.

‘You take care,’ replied his mother. ‘You mind YOURSELF—that’s your business. You take too much on yourself. You mind YOURSELF, or you’ll find yourself in Queer Street, that’s what will happen to you. You’re hysterical, always were.’

‘I’m all right, mother,’ he said. ‘There’s no need to worry about ME, I assure you.’

‘Let the dead bury their dead—don’t go and bury yourself along with them—that’s what I tell you. I know you well enough.’

He did not answer this, not knowing what to say. The mother sat bunched up in silence, her beautiful white hands, that had no rings whatsoever, clasping the pommels of her arm–chair.

‘You can’t do it,’ she said, almost bitterly. ‘You haven’t the nerve. You’re as weak as a cat, really—always were. Is this young woman staying here?’

‘No,’ said Gerald. ‘She is going home tonight.’

‘Then she’d better have the dog–cart. Does she go far?’

‘Only to Beldover.’

‘Ah!’ The elderly woman never looked at Gudrun, yet she seemed to take knowledge of her presence.

‘You are inclined to take too much on yourself, Gerald,’ Gerald said the mother, pulling herself to her feet, with a little difficulty.

‘Will you go, mother?’ he asked, politely.

‘Yes, I’ll go up again,’ she replied. Turning to Gudrun, she bade her ‘Good–night.’ Then she went slowly to the door, as if she were unaccustomed to walking. At the door she lifted her face to him, implicitly. He kissed her.

‘Don’t come any further with me,’ she said, in her barely audible voice. ‘I don’t want you any further.’

He bade her good–night, watched her across to the stairs and mount slowly. Then he closed the door and came back to Gudrun. Gudrun rose also, to go.

‘A queer being, my mother,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ replied Gudrun.

‘She has her own thoughts.’

‘Yes,’ said Gudrun.

Then they were silent.

‘You want to go?’ he asked. ‘Half a minute, I’ll just have a horse put in—’

‘No,’ said Gudrun. ‘I want to walk.’

He had promised to walk with her down the long, lonely mile of drive, and she wanted this.

‘You might JUST as well drive,’ he said.

‘I’d MUCH RATHER walk,’ she asserted, with emphasis.

‘You would! Then I will come along with you. You know where your things are? I’ll put boots on.’

He put on a cap, and an overcoat over his evening dress. They went out into the night.

‘Let us light a cigarette,’ he said, stopping in a sheltered angle of the porch. ‘You have one too.’

“This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the garden path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly suitable for taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its surface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his boots.

“On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man’s person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their features. Having sniffed the dead man’s lips, I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard-of idea. The forcible administration of poison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist.

“And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted me. I was inclined from the first to the latter supposition. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscription was discovered upon the wall, I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that I asked Gregson whether he had inquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber’s former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative.