John waved away the material suggestion.
"No. I want to think."
"Very good, Mr. John."
Left alone, John walked to the window and frowned meditatively out. His brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which the most professional of detectives might have envied. For the first time since his cousin Hugo had come to him to have his head repaired he began to realize that there might have been something, after all, in that young man's rambling story. Taken in conjunction with what Sturgis had just told him, Hugo's weird tale of finding Doctor Twist burgling the house became significant.
This Twist, now. After all, what about him? He had come from nowhere to settle down in Worcestershire, ostensibly in order to conduct a health farm. But what if that health farm were a mere blind for more dastardly work. After all, it was surely a commonplace that your scientific criminal invariably adopted some specious cover of respectability for his crimes....
Into the radius of John's vision there came Mr. Thomas G. Molloy, walking placidly beside the moat with his dashing daughter. It seemed to John as if he had been sent at just this moment for a purpose. What he wanted above all things was a keen-minded sensible man of the world with whom to discuss these suspicions of his, and who was better qualified for this rôle than Mr. Molloy? Long since he had fallen under the spell of the other's magnetic personality, and had admired the breadth of his intellect. Thomas G. Molloy was, it seemed to him, the ideal confidant.
He left the room hurriedly, and ran down the stairs.
III
Mr. Molloy was still strolling beside the moat when John arrived. He greeted him with his usual bluff kindliness. Soapy, like John some half hour earlier, was feeling amiably disposed toward all mankind this morning.