“No, no!” Mrs. Mallet cried.  “To bring him back voluntarily, that he may face his trial like a man!”

“Yes, dear.  That is quite right.  However, the next thing, of course, would be that he would shave in whole or in part.  His big black beard was so very conspicuous; he would certainly get rid of that before attempting to escape.  The servants being in bed, he was not pressed for time; he had the whole night before him.  So, of course, he shaved.  On the other hand, the police, you may be sure, will circulate his photograph—­we must not shirk these points”—­for Mrs. Mallet winced again—­“will circulate his photograph, beard and all; and that will really be one of our great safeguards; for the bushy beard so masks the face that, without it, Hugo would be scarcely recognisable.  I conclude, therefore, that he must have shorn himself before leaving home; though naturally I did not make the police a present of the hint by getting Lina to ask any questions in that direction of the housemaid.”

“You are probably right,” I answered.  “But would he have a razor?”

“I was coming to that.  No; certainly he would not.  He had not shaved for years.  And they kept no men-servants; which makes it difficult for him to borrow one from a sleeping man.  So what he would do would doubtless be to cut off his beard, or part of it, quite close, with a pair of scissors, and then get himself properly shaved next morning in the first country town he came to.”

“The first country town?”

“Certainly.  That leads up to the next point.  We must try to be cool and collected.”  She was quivering with suppressed emotion herself, as she said it, but her soothing hand still lay on Mrs. Mallet’s.  “The next thing is—­he would leave London.”

“But not by rail, you say?”

“He is an intelligent man, and in the course of defending others has thought about this matter.  Why expose himself to the needless risk and observation of a railway station?  No; I saw at once what he would do.  Beyond doubt, he would cycle.  He always wondered it was not done oftener, under similar circumstances.”

“But has his bicycle gone?”

“Lina looked.  It has not.  I should have expected as much.  I told her to note that point very unobtrusively, so as to avoid giving the police the clue.  She saw the machine in the outer hall as usual.”

“He is too good a criminal lawyer to have dreamt of taking his own,” Mrs. Mallet interposed, with another effort.

“But where could he have hired or bought one at that time of night?” I exclaimed.

“Nowhere—­without exciting the gravest suspicion.  Therefore, I conclude, he stopped in London for the night, sleeping at an hotel, without luggage, and paying for his room in advance.  It is frequently done, and if he arrived late, very little notice would be taken of him.  Big hotels about the Strand, I am told, have always a dozen such casual bachelor guests every evening.”