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the confession of a dying man into French for the sake of a priest who didn't know the local language. The priest told me afterwards I was bound not to disclose to anybody what I'd heard."

"He didn't know you, anyhow, Carmichael," suggested Reeves.

"As a matter of fact, I've never mentioned what he said to anybody, though it was sufficiently curious."

"It's impossible," resumed Reeves, "not to make inferences; the mistake is to depend on them. In ordinary life, you have to take risks; you have to sit down in the barber's chair, although you know it is just as easy for him to cut your throat as to shave you. But in detection one should take no chances, give no one the benefit of the doubt. Half of the undetected crimes in the world are due to our reluctance to suspect anybody."

"But surely," urged Marryatt, "you would allow character to go for something? I was a schoolmaster once, and while one knew the little beasts were capable of almost anything, one did clear some people of suspicion on mere character."

"But there again," argued Gordon, "you knew them very well."

"Not really," said Marryatt. "A perpetual war of mutual deception is kept up between schoolmasters and schoolboys. One trusted, I think, one's unconscious impressions most."

"If I were a detective," persisted Reeves, "I would suspect my own father or mother as soon