The inspector bowed to the compliment, but seemed no way abashed. "I showed the inside of your purse, Mr. Merrivale, There was no difficulty in sight of that. Please go on, Mr. Kavanagh, and I'll wait."
I concluded in as few words as possible, anxiously desiring to hear what Keene had to say; and immediately that I had finished, Merrivale turned toward him:
"What do you think of it all, in heaven's name?"
Mr. Inspector scraped his chin, and waited some moments before replying, his bright keen eyes glancing alternately from one to another of us. "If I were to tell you, sirs, all I think, you'd be tired of hearing me, for I've been thinking as hard as my brains could go for the last week past. If you'd have made a friend, Mr. Kavanagh, of Mr. Merrivale or your humble servant in the matter you just now revealed, it might have helped me not a trifle--not a trifle. However, I believe you did it for the best; and after all I think we'll be even with them yet. But it is as confoundedly black a business as it ever fell to my lot to deal with; and I've had businesses, gentlemen, as black as--well, as old Harry himself. You see there's three points to follow up; and if we can tackle one securely, why, I consider we shall tackle all, for I believe they hang together. First," checking it off on his thumb, "there's the murder; and the point there is to find who really bought that grain of strychnine which the chemist has booked. It rests between master and man to reveal; and I incline to the latter, and have my eye on him. Never tell me," said the detective, warming with his subject, "that neither of them don't know; I tell you one of them does know, and my name's not Keene if I don't have it out of them yet. That's one point, an't it, Mr. Merrivale?" Merrivale assented. "Then the second," checking number two off on his stumpy fore-finger, "includes four parties, and their connection with each other; the man De Vos or Sullivan, the man O'Brian, Mr. Lister Wilmot, and the housekeeper."
"The housekeeper, Mrs. Haag!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir; Mrs. Haag, if that's her name."
"You think it is not?"
"I know it isn't."
"You know it?"
"I do. When Jones showed me his notes, and repeated to me what you and he had heard in Blue-Anchor Lane last Thursday night, I smelt a rat, Mr. Kavanagh, and I followed my nose, sir. When I said I was on the scent, I meant it. From that hour I wrote down in my note-book, 'Mrs. Haag, alias Bradley--Bradley, alias O'Brian; her husband, escaped convict from New South Wales.' For Jones identified that man by a description in the hands of all of us in the force. To have taken him there and then would simply have been madness, and insured your both being murdered in that villainous hole. But to follow out the connection between the housekeeper and him, him and Sullivan, Sullivan and Mr. Wilmot, is another point, an't it, Mr. Merrivale?"