The other’s voice was low and strained as he replied in the affirmative. “For good reasons of your own?” “Yes.” “For which same reasons you left the hotel quite early on the following morning?” “Yes.” “Your business compels you to travel a great deal?” “Yes.” “Do you often register under an alias?” “Yes,” returned the other, his face twitching. “But not always?” “No.” “In a large city and a strange hotel, for example, you’d take any name which would correspond to the initials, H. M. G., on your dress-suit case. But in a small town where you were known, you’d be obliged to register under your real name of Harvey M. Greene. It was that necessity which enabled me to find you.” “I’d like to know how you did it,” said the other gloomily. From the left-hand drawer of his desk Jones produced a piece of netting, with hooks along one end. “Do you recognize the material, Mrs. Hale,” he asked. “Why, it’s the same stuff as the Hotel Denton curtains, isn’t it?” she asked. “Yes,” said Average Jones, attaching it to the curtain rod at the side door. “Now, will you jerk that violently with one hand?” “It will tear loose, won’t it?” she asked. “That’s just what it will do. Try it.” The fabric ripped from the hooks as she jerked. “You remember,” said Jones, “that your curtain was torn partly across, and not ripped from the hook at all. Now see.” He caught the netting in both hands and tautened it sharply. It began to part. “Awkward,” he said, “yet it’s the only way it could have been done. Now, here’s a bedpost, exactly like the one in room 168, occupied by Mr. Greene at the Denton. Kirby, you’re a powerful man. Can you break that knob off with one hand?” He wedged the post firmly in a chair for the trial. The bedpost resisted. “Could you do it with both hands?” he asked. “Probably, if I could get a hold. But there isn’t surface enough for a good hold.” “No, there isn’t. But now.” Jones coiled a rope around the post and handed the end to Kirby. He pulled sharply. The knob snapped and rolled on the floor. “Q. E. D.,” said Kirby. “But it doesn’t mean anything to me.” “Doesn’t it? Let me recall some other evidence. The guest who saw Mr. Greene in the hallway thought he was carrying something in both hands. The milk driver who hailed him on the balcony noticed that he gestured awkwardly with both hands. In what circumstances would a man use both hands for action normally performed with one?” “Too much drink,” hazarded Kirby, looking dubiously at Greene, who had been following Jones’ discourse with absorbed attention. “Possibly. But it wouldn’t fit this case.” “Physical weakness,” suggested Mrs. Hale. “Rather a shrewd suggestion. But no weakling broke off that bedpost in Henry M. Gillespie’s room. I assumed the theory that the phenomena of that night were symptomatic rather than accidental. Therefore, I set out to find in what other places the mysterious H. M. G. had performed.”