"LOOK AT THIS SKETCH OF THE HOLE IN THE SKULL."
"'Guide may have jobbed him from behind with some other instrument, and afterwards thrown it out of window.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'but that is going on the assumption that Guide did the trick, which I don't for a moment think is the case. Besides, if he did throw anything out of window, it would most assuredly have been found. They keep the permanent way very thoroughly inspected upon the Metropolitan. No, Barnes. There is some other agent in this case, animate or inanimate, which so far we have overlooked completely; and an innocent man's life depends upon our ravelling it out.'
"Barnes lifted his shoulders helplessly, and took another sandwich. 'I don't see what we can do.'
"'Nor I, very clearly. But we must start from the commencement, and go over the ground inch by inch.'
"So wrapped up was I in the case by this time, that I could not fix my mind to anything else. Then and there I went out and set about my inquiries.
"With some trouble I found the compartment in which the tragedy had taken place, but learnt nothing new from it. The station and the railway people at Addison Road, Kensington, were similarly drawn blank. The ticket inspector at Shaftesbury Road, who distinctly remembered Guide's passage, at first seemed inclined to tell me nothing new, till I dragged it out of him by a regular emetic of questioning.
"Then he did remember that Guide had been carrying in his hand a carpenter's straw bass, as he passed through the wicket. He did not recollect whether he had mentioned this to the police: didn't see that it mattered.
"I thought differently, and with a new vague hope in my heart, posted back to the prison. I had heard no word of this hand-baggage from Guide. It remained to be seen what he had done with it.