The Professor rubbed his hands together briskly. “Excellent, excellent!” he exclaimed. “I told you this morning, Harold, that a problem was bound to turn up before long. By all means tell me your difficulties, Inspector. But let me beg of you to keep to facts, and not to digress into conjecture.”
Hanslet smiled. The Professor’s passion for facts was well-known to him from past experience. “Well, I expect you know as much about it as I do,” he began. “Ever since Tovey the greengrocer was killed last November, there’s been a lot in the papers——”
But the Professor interrupted him. “I should perhaps have explained, Inspector, that since last October I have scarcely opened a newspaper. My whole mind has been concentrated upon a task which is now happily finished. The name of Tovey the greengrocer is, I regret to say, utterly unfamiliar to me. I should be glad if you would treat me as one who has only lately reached this world from the planet Mars, and give me the facts without presuming that I have any previous knowledge of them.”
“Very well, Professor,” replied Hanslet. “You must have heard of a series of deaths under peculiar circumstances which have occurred in Praed Street, not half a mile away from here? Why, I read about them in New York! They caused a great sensation.”
“I am not concerned with popular sensations,” said the Professor coldly. “I admit that some rumours of such happenings penetrated the isolation with which I have endeavoured to surround myself, but I dismissed them from my mind as likely to introduce a disturbing factor. I repeat that you had better repeat the facts, as briefly as possible.”
“Very well, Professor, I will tell you the story exactly as it was told to me at the Yard,” replied Hanslet. “You will be able to see how much is fact and how much conjecture. As I was not on the spot myself, I cannot vouch for the details. Will that do?”
The Professor nodded, and turned to Harold. “Make a note of the names and dates mentioned by Inspector Hanslet,” he said. “Now, Inspector, you may proceed.”
Hanslet, whose memory for names and facts was rarely at fault, recounted as briefly as he could the course of events from the murder of Mr. Tovey in November, to the finding of Martin’s body in the cellar of Number 407, in January. The Professor interrupted him now and then to ask a question, but in the main he allowed him to tell the story in his own way. When he had finished, and the Professor had expressed himself satisfied, Hanslet continued.
“The man who’s been in charge of the case is a fellow called Whyland, keen enough on his job, but a bit lacking in imagination. I had a chat with him yesterday, and he confessed that he was completely at the end of his tether. Up till last Saturday evening, he told me, he was pretty sure that he could lay his hand on the criminal, but that night something happened which entirely upset his calculations.”
“What was that?” enquired the Professor, who was listening intently.