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which his attempt would be made? Yet, without a fog, the attempt would have been perfectly desperate."

"Yes, I suppose that's true."

"And it wasn't merely the general setting, it was the details. How could Marryatt know that the train would be held up by signals just there? How could he tell that Brotherhood would get into the part of the train which hadn't got a corridor, and that he would get into an empty carriage? What would he have been able to do, if Brotherhood had happened to come back as he always did⁠—did, in fact, come back on Tuesday⁠—in a crowded train like the 3.47? How could he be certain that nobody had seen Brotherhood get into the three o'clock? That nobody had noticed him at Weighford? Alternately, don't you see, you make your man take the most superhumanly cunning precautions, and then trust to blind chance. But those are all objections of detail. I didn't mention them because, as I say, you'd have found some sort of answer for each. My real objection was much deeper."

"Well, why didn't you tell me about that?"

"Because you wouldn't have begun to understand it. It's concerned, you see, with people, not with things. It's simply that Davenant is the kind of person who would kill a man, and Marryatt isn't."

"You mean because Marryatt's a parson? But, dash it all, Davenant goes to church."

"Davenant goes to church, but he isn't the sort