“We are getting near the heart of the mystery.”

“H’m,” said Gatton, “I’m not so sure.  The deeper we go the darker it gets.  A man has been scouring the neighborhood all day in quest of the carter who delivered the crate to the docks, but so far without results.  I consider it a very important point that we should learn not only how and when the crate was collected, but when and by whom it was delivered at the garage.”

“Another question,” I said:  “although I believe I know the answer.  Was it a man or a woman who ordered the cab?”

“Both in the case of Marie and in the case of the cab-rank,” replied Gatton, “it was a woman’s voice that spoke.”

“Thank God, one doubt is resolved!” I said.  “It cannot possibly have been Isobel in either of these cases!”

“Right!” agreed Gatton, promptly.  “I am as glad as you are.  There is clearly a second woman in the case; yet I can’t bring myself to believe that this elaborate scheme was the work of a woman.”

“Not of a jealous woman?” I suggested.

“Not of any woman,” he replied.  “Besides—­who put the body into the crate?  What kind of a woman would it be who could do a deed like that?”

“In other words,” said I, “you are still without a ghost of a clew to the identity of the person who committed the murder, and to the means employed?”

Resting his pipe upon an ash-tray, the Inspector took up from my writing-table the little image of Bast and held it up between finger and thumb.

“We always come back to the green cat,” he said slowly.  “I will trouble you now, Mr. Addison, for the history of such a little image as this.”

“Yes,” I replied abstractedly.  “But there is a matter about which I have not spoken to you hitherto because quite frankly I had doubted if it had any existence outside my imagination; but every new development of the case is so utterly fantastic that I no longer regard my experience as being in the least degree outside the province of possibility.  Before we go further, therefore, into the purely archaeological side of the inquiry (and I have still serious doubt respecting the usefulness of such a quest) let me relate a peculiar experience which I had last night after I had left Bolton.”

Gatton listened in silence whilst I gave him an account of that evasive shadow which I had perceived behind me, and then of the great cat’s eyes which had looked in through the window.

His expression of naive wonderment was almost funny; and when I had concluded: 

“Well, Mr. Addison,” said he, “if you had told me this story before I had taken up ‘the Oritoga mystery,’ for so I observe—­” drawing an evening paper from his pocket—­“the press has agreed to entitle the case, I should have suggested that your peculiar studies had begun to tell upon your nerves; but this voice on the ’phone and this empty house in which only one room was furnished, finally the green cat painted on the packing-case and the green cat which stands there upon the table have prepared me for even stranger things than your adventure of last night.”