"Now, subtlety may be an admirable thing, but it can be overdone. I have never believed that, because a certain thing seems obvious, it is necessarily wrong. It was reasonably certain that one, or all of the missing persons, had knowledge of what had happened. It was extremely probable that one of them was guilty. Our starting-point was to find them. That was where organisation came in. The miniature helped me to bluff Sir Ralph Fairfield into an admission that it was the portrait of Lola of Vienna, and I purposely showed it to some newspaper men on a pretext. One of them commented on the likeness to the Princess Petrovska, who was staying at the Hotel Palatial, and I at once telephoned to the hotel, and discovered that she was supposed to have left at ten on the evening of the murder. A reference to the St. Petersburg police gave us a few more facts about her. She became a possibility as the veiled visitor.
"The finger-prints on the dagger, although we should have adopted a different method had we known what we know now, helped us to narrow the investigation, for they apparently—and actually by luck—settled the innocence of several people who might have been suspected.
"Lady Eileen Meredith came to me with a story that seemed to implicate Sir Ralph Fairfield. There seemed just a possibility that she was right, for I could conceive jealousy might be a motive—though, of course, there was so far nothing to explain why the master of the house and his valet should take to flight. I took Sir Ralph's finger-prints by a ruse, and to me that seemed fairly satisfactory proof
that he was not the man. Of course, I was then presuming that the finger-prints were those of the murderer.
"Then I received information that Ivan and a man my informant took for Goldenburg had been seen at Victoria Station on the night of the murder. I managed to find Ivan and, by a threat, got a partly formed opinion confirmed. He knew that the murdered man was not Mr. Grell. I took from him the pearls that were to have formed a wedding present, and let him go after taking his finger-prints. My idea was to have him watched, for I felt confident that he was in touch with his master—whom I believed to be the murderer.
"But it was not enough to follow one line. We used the fact of the striking similarity of Grell and Goldenburg to advertise for the former under the name of the latter. The mere fact of throwing the description broadcast, was calculated to make any attempt to escape more difficult. Meanwhile, we were making inquiries about every one concerned in the case by co-operation of foreign police-forces, and particularly with the help of Pinkerton's agency in the United States. It was all organisation, you see—the individual counted for little.
"The first attempt to communicate with Fairfield failed, not through the working of any miracle on our part, but by patient watching. I stole a note from Fairfield, which gave us something to act upon, in the East End. Remember, the immediate object of our search was Robert Grell—not necessarily for the murderer. Do you follow?"
"I think I do," answered Grell. "You wanted, at least, an explanation from me."
"Precisely. Well, on top of that, we got a typewritten letter, informing us of the kidnapping of Waverley. That letter was important, for its contents showed that we were up against people who were absolutely reckless. We were able to trace, too, a typewriting machine as having been sold recently to a man named Israel, in Grave Street, There were finger-prints on the letter, and they corresponded to those on the dagger. As a matter of fact, I recently found out that the letter had been written on paper given by you. You had torn a half-sheet from an old letter, and I can only presume it was one that had been written to you by Lady Eileen Meredith. For they were her finger-prints.