"Of course," he went on, "I jumped at the conclusion that the stranger was this Colonel Montgomery. Then, while closely questioning the maid about the events of November 7, she suddenly remembered that she lost an old skirt and coat about that time. They had vanished from her room, and she had never laid eyes on them since. This set me thinking. I confronted her with the clothes worn by Lady Dyke when she was found in the river, and I'm jiggered if Dobson didn't recognize them at once as being her missing property. Now, wasn't that a rum go?" "It certainly was," said Bruce, who was piecing together the story of the murder in his mind as each additional detail came to light. "Naturally I thought harder than ever after that. It then occurred to me that Jane Harding must have had some powerful reasons for so suddenly shutting up about the identification of her mistress's underclothing. She was right enough, as we know, in regard to the skirt and coat, but she admitted to me that the linen on the dead body was just the same as Lady Dyke's. Curiously enough, it was not marked by initials, crest, or laundry-mark, and I ascertained months ago that owing to some fad of her ladyship's, all the family washing was done on the estate in Yorkshire. This explained the absence of the otherwise inevitable laundry-mark." "Thus far you are coherence itself." "Well," said Mr. White complacently, "I was a long time getting to work, Mr. Bruce, and had it not been for your help I should probably never have got at the truth, but I flatter myself that, once on the right track, I seldom leave it. However, as I was saying, I felt that Jane Harding knew a good deal more than she would tell, except under pressure, so I decided to put that pressure on." "In what way?" "I frightened her. Played off on her a bit of the stage business she is so fond of. This afternoon I placed a pair of handcuffs in my pocket and went to her place at Bloomsbury, having previously prepared a bogus warrant for her arrest on a charge of complicity in the murder of Lady Dyke." "It was a dangerous game!" "Very. If it had gone wrong and reached the ears of the Commissioner or got into the papers, I should have been reduced or dismissed. But what is a policeman to do in such cases? I was losing my temper over this infernal inquiry and never obtaining any real light, though always coming across startling developments. It had to end somehow, and I took the chance. The make-believe warrant and the production of handcuffs for a woman--they are never used, you know, in reality--have often been trump-cards for us when everything else failed." "This time, then, the 'properties' made up the 'show,' as Miss Harding would put it?"