Crewe, having finished his examination of the glove, handed it to the boy, whose first act was to slip it on his left hand and move his fingers about to assure himself that they were in good working order in spite of being hidden.  It was the first occasion on which Joe had worn a glove.

“It was found in the room in which Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered,” continued Crewe.  “The other one was not there.  The question I want to solve is, did it belong to Sir Horace, or to some one who visited him on the night he was murdered?  The police think it belonged to Sir Horace because it is the same size as the gloves he wore, and because Sir Horace’s hosier stocks the same kind—­as does nearly every fashionable hosier in London.  They think he lost the right-hand glove on his way up from Scotland.  It will occur to you, Joe, though you don’t wear gloves, that it is more common for men to lose the right-hand glove than the left-hand, because the right hand is used a great deal more than the left, and even men who would not be seen in the street without gloves find there are many things they cannot do with a gloved hand.  For instance, to dive one’s hand into one’s trouser pocket where most men keep their loose change the glove has to be removed.”

“Then the gentleman would take off his right glove when he paid for his taxi-cab from St. Pancras,” said Joe, who was familiar through the accounts in the newspapers with the main details of the Fewbanks mystery.

“Right, Joe,” said his master approvingly.  “And in that case he dropped the glove between the taxi-cab outside his front gates and his room, and it would have been found.  I have made inquiries and I am satisfied it was not found.”

“He might have lost it when he was getting into the train at Scotland,” suggested the lad.  “He had to change trains at Glasgow—­he might have lost it there.”

“That is a rule-of-thumb deduction,” said Crewe, with a kindly smile.  “It is good enough for the police, for they have apparently adopted it, but it is not good enough for me.  What you don’t understand, Joe, is that an odd glove is of no value in the eyes of a man who wears gloves.  He doesn’t take it home as a memento of his carelessness in losing the other.  He throws it away.  Therefore if this is Sir Horace’s glove he took it home because he was unaware that he had lost the other.  He would put on his gloves before leaving the train at St. Pancras.  And he would pull off the right-hand one—­he was not left-handed—­when the taxi-cab was nearing his home so as to be able to pay the fare.  Therefore, if it is Sir Horace’s glove the fellow to it was dropped in the taxi-cab, or dropped between the taxi-cab and the house.  If the glove had been lost at the other end of the journey in Scotland Sir Horace would have flung this one out of the carriage window when he became aware of the loss.  As I have told you no glove was found between the gate at Riversbrook and the room in which Sir Horace was murdered.  I got from the police the number of the taxi-cab in which Sir Horace was driven from St. Pancras, and the driver tells me that no glove was left in his cab.  So what have we to do next, Joe?”