“And how long have you been playing this trick upon us, Mr. Holmes?” said the inspector angrily.  “How long have you allowed us to waste ourselves upon a search that you knew to be an absurd one?”

“Not one instant, my dear Mr. Mac.  Only last night did I form my views of the case.  As they could not be put to the proof until this evening, I invited you and your colleague to take a holiday for the day.  Pray what more could I do?  When I found the suit of clothes in the moat, it at once became apparent to me that the body we had found could not have been the body of Mr. John Douglas at all, but must be that of the bicyclist from Tunbridge Wells.  No other conclusion was possible.  Therefore I had to determine where Mr. John Douglas himself could be, and the balance of probability was that with the connivance of his wife and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such conveniences for a fugitive, and awaiting quieter times when he could make his final escape.”

“Well, you figured it out about right,” said Douglas approvingly.  “I thought I’d dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I stood under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds once for all off my track.  Mind you, from first to last I have done nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do again; but you’ll judge that for yourselves when I tell you my story.  Never mind warning me, Inspector:  I’m ready to stand pat upon the truth.

“I’m not going to begin at the beginning.  That’s all there,” he indicated my bundle of papers, “and a mighty queer yarn you’ll find it.  It all comes down to this:  That there are some men that have good cause to hate me and would give their last dollar to know that they had got me.  So long as I am alive and they are alive, there is no safety in this world for me.  They hunted me from Chicago to California, then they chased me out of America; but when I married and settled down in this quiet spot I thought my last years were going to be peaceable.

“I never explained to my wife how things were.  Why should I pull her into it?  She would never have a quiet moment again; but would always be imagining trouble.  I fancy she knew something, for I may have dropped a word here or a word there; but until yesterday, after you gentlemen had seen her, she never knew the rights of the matter.  She told you all she knew, and so did Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened there was mighty little time for explanations.  She knows everything now, and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner.  But it was a hard question, dear,” he took her hand for an instant in his own, “and I acted for the best.

“Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over in Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street.  It was only a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I never doubted who it was.  It was the worst enemy I had among them all—­one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a caribou all these years.  I knew there was trouble coming, and I came home and made ready for it.  I guessed I’d fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about ’76.  I never doubted that it would be with me still.