The man had been killed in the same fashion, he wore goggles and overalls, and the machine was smashed, though not so completely. Neither of the men had been identified. In the first case, there might be a reason for this, as the man was a foreigner. In the second case, the man was an Englishman. Both the machines were old patterns, and of a cheap make, carried fictitious numbers, and Baines had been unable to find out where they had been purchased. He held to his theory of the car, but was now inclined to think that the cyclists had been purposely driven into. Granted a certain shape of bonnet--and the car driven through Aylesbury appeared to have this shape--he contended that, in endeavoring to avoid the collision, a cyclist would be struck in exactly the manner indicated by the appearance of the head. He was therefore busy trying to trace a devil-mad motorist. The discovery of a dead chauffeur on a lonely road near Newbury now brought me into the affair. He had apparently been killed in precisely the same manner as the victims of the Aylesbury and Saffron Walden tragedies; and so I was brought in contact with Baines. From the first he scorned my arguments and suggestions. It seemed to me that this third tragedy went to disprove his theory of a madly driven motor car, but he insisted that it was only a further proof. Was it not possible, he asked, that the mad owner of the car, believing that his chauffeur knew the truth, had killed him to protect himself? I asked him how he supposed the car had been driven at the chauffeur in order to injure him, exactly as it had injured men on cycles. When Baines answered that the chauffeur was probably on a cycle at the time, I wanted to know why, in this case, the motorist had gathered up the broken machine and taken it away. In short, we quarreled over the affair, and Baines was furious when I was able to prove that in neither case was the wrecked cycle a complete machine. True, in one case, only some trivial pieces were missing which might have been driven into the ground by the force of the fall; but in the other an important part was wanting, without which the machine could not have been driven. I came to the conclusion that there had been foul play, that the broken machines were a blind, and that the men had been brought to the places where they were found after they were dead. I returned to London to pursue inquiries in this direction, and found the letter from Quarles asking me to go and see him as soon as possible. I went to Chelsea that evening, and was shown into the dining-room. The professor looked a little old to-night, I thought. "Very glad to see you, Wigan. I want your help." "I shall be delighted to give it, you have helped me so often. Your granddaughter is well, I trust?" "Yes, she is away. She has taken a situation." "A situation!" I exclaimed.