who was Oldacres tailor.  I then worked the lawn very carefully for signs and traces, but this drought has made everything as hard as iron.  Nothing was to be seen save that some body or bundle had been dragged through a low privet hedge which is in a line with the wood-pile.  All that, of course, fits in with the official theory.  I crawled about the lawn with an August sun on my back, but I got up at the end of an hour no wiser than before.

“Well, after this fiasco I went into the bedroom and examined that also.  The blood-stains were very slight, mere smears and discolourations, but undoubtedly fresh.  The stick had been removed, but there also the marks were slight.  There is no doubt about the stick belonging to our client.  He admits it.  Footmarks of both men could be made out on the carpet, but none of any third person, which again is a trick for the other side.  They were piling up their score all the time and we were at a standstill.

“Only one little gleam of hope did I get—­and yet it amounted to nothing.  I examined the contents of the safe, most of which had been taken out and left on the table.  The papers had been made up into sealed envelopes, one or two of which had been opened by the police.  They were not, so far as I could judge, of any great value, nor did the bank-book show that Mr. Oldacre was in such very affluent circumstances.  But it seemed to me that all the papers were not there.  There were allusions to some deeds—­possibly the more valuable—­which I could not find.  This, of course, if we could definitely prove it, would turn Lestrade’s argument against himself, for who would steal a thing if he knew that he would shortly inherit it?

“Finally, having drawn every other cover and picked up no scent, I tried my luck with the housekeeper.  Mrs. Lexington is her name—­a little, dark, silent person, with suspicious and sidelong eyes.  She could tell us something if she would—­I am convinced of it.  But she was as close as wax.  Yes, she had let Mr. McFarlane in at half-past nine.  She wished her hand had withered before she had done so.  She had gone to bed at half-past ten.  Her room was at the other end of the house, and she could hear nothing of what had passed.  Mr. McFarlane had left his hat, and to the best of her had been awakened by the alarm of fire.  Her poor, dear master had certainly been murdered.  Had he any enemies?  Well, every man had enemies, but Mr. Oldacre kept himself very much to himself, and only met people in the way of business.  She had seen the buttons, and was sure that they belonged to the clothes which he had worn last night.  The wood-pile was very dry, for it had not rained for a month.  It burned like tinder, and by the time she reached the spot, nothing could be seen but flames.  She and all the firemen smelled the burned flesh from inside it.  She knew nothing of the papers, nor of Mr. Oldacre’s private affairs.