`Yes, but there's another thing,' he observed. `I say, Doctor, why didn't he come to me straight. away? If he were as upset as all that, he would have come down to the Tower immediately, wouldn't he?'
`No,' said the doctor. `And I shall now expound to you, children, why. It is the point which confirmed my suspicions of the whole affair. I mean the second attack on Sir William Bitton.'
`Good Lord, yes…!'' Hadley stopped his pacing. `If Driscoll did all this, why did he steal a second hat from Bitton? That wasn't precisely the way to get him out of the scrape, was it?'
`No. But it was a piece of remarkably quick thinking in an emergency.'
`Maybe it was,' the chief inspector admitted, gloomily. `But it would seem to me somewhat to complicate matters. He'd have another explanation to add to his uncle when he'd finished the ones. you were outlining a; minute ago.'
`Be quiet and let me talk. He was going to get Mr Dalrye's help, but, before he did, he intended to make one last effort to help himself. You see, I rather wondered why he had definitely, made the appointment at the Tower for one o'clock when he could easily have gone down there in the morning. And, having made the appointment,' he didn't appear, until nearly twenty minutes past one! What held him up? If anything, you would have, expected him to be ahead of time… What he was going to do was make an attempt to return the manuscript, unknown to his uncle.
`That was rather more difficult an undertaking than it sounds. He knew positively, from what he had heard at the house, that his uncle didn't connect the theft of the manuscript with the theft of, the hat. Suppose, then, Driscoll simply put it into an envelope and sent it back to his uncle by post? Too dangerous! Driscoll knew Arbor was in the house. He had heard Arbor's broad talk at the dinner table. He knew that his uncle would never believe Arbor had first stolen the manuscript, and then posted it back again. And if Arbor were eliminated… you:' see?’
'Yes. If Arbor were eliminated, the only person who could have stolen it was a member of his own household.'
`Then what follows? Sir William would know it hadn't been one of the servants; he ridiculed that idea when he talked to us. There would remain Lester Bitton, Laura Bitton, Sheila, and Driscoll. Lester and Laura Bitton were definitely several hundred miles away when it was stolen. Only four people could have known about that manuscript, and two of them were in Cornwall; Of the other two, Sheila could hardly have been regarded as the culprit. Inevitably Driscoll must come to be suspected, and be thought to have sent it back in a fit of conscience — which would be precisely like Driscoll, anyway. Rest assured Driscoll knew all this, and he knew that his uncle would suspect it if he posted back that manuscript. But what was he to do? For the same reasons, he couldn't slip into the house and drop the manuscript somewhere so that it would be found. Sir William knew damned well it hadn't been mislaid.'
`I'm hanged if I can see what he could do,' the chief inspector confessed. `Unless he simply sat tight and let his uncle suspect Arbor. But a nervous type like Driscoll would always have the horrible fear that his uncle might, somehow find out. What he'd want most to do would be get the thing out of his hands — quickly.'