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When they met at breakfast next morning, Gordon was in a chastened mood.

"I was thinking over our ideas last night in bed, and I see that it's all a wash-out. The thing doesn't work."

"Doesn't work?"

"No, there are two snags which seem to me hopeless. Look here, if Brotherhood was chucked off the 4.50 from Paston Oatvile, one can understand why Davenant should have got the wind up. He may have seen the thing happen; or he may have seen Brotherhood get in at Oatvile and found he wasn't in the train when it got to Whitchurch⁠—that might make him think there was something wrong, even if he'd really nothing to do with it. But if Davenant came back on the 4.50, and Brotherhood had been chucked off the earlier train, how did Davenant know anything about it? He would hear nothing, till he heard that we had found a dead body on the lines, and even then we weren't certain till next day whose body it was. Why did Davenant disappear, in that case, and hide in a very uncomfortable passage?"