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saw him boarding the train at Weighford⁠—that he was the man we were pursuing, it still doesn't follow that he was the murderer. It's extraordinary, the shifts men have resorted to before now when they thought they were going to be accused of murder, although they were as innocent as you or me. Put it this way⁠—suppose Davenant had actually come up by that train on Tuesday, for reasons best known to himself. He gets to Paston Whitchurch, and then hears of what we found at the third tee. He cannot give any plausible explanation of his coming back here on Tuesday at all. He has some grudge against Brotherhood which we know nothing about. Now, if he can conceal the fact that he came back here at all that day, he escapes suspicion. He knows, somehow, about this secret passage; knows that, as a member of the club, he can wander about here pretty safely without attracting attention. He decides to lie low in the priests' hiding-place till Saturday, and then turn up bright and smiling, knowing nothing about the murder. I say, innocent men have done stranger things before now."

"It sounds pretty thin to me," said Gordon.

"Once more I tell you, it is a fatal habit to proceed from observation to inference, and give inference the name of fact. You say Davenant is the murderer; I say, we don't know that; we only know that Davenant was a man who for some reason expected to be accused of the murder, and consequently behaved in a very peculiar way."

"I still don't quite see," said Carmichael, "what