“He sprinted down the road to near the East Gate, carried his machine into the plantation, and concealed it. I set my men to hunt for it; but they didn’t find it. It’s pure theory; but I think it’s quite likely he had some tackle ready and hoisted the thing up into a tree. No ordinary country constable would ever think of looking up into the air for a bicycle, and it would be well hidden among the leaves. But that’s mere conjecture. “Once clear of the bicycle, he got through the hedge again on to the public road, hurried along it as far as he could and then sat down by the wayside to wait for the postman’s cart, which he knew was due to pass along at a fixed time. When the postman came, he had his yarn ready about his sore toe and all the rest of it.” “That’s remarkably neat,” said Ardsley. “But if I’d been in your shoes I wouldn’t have given Ernest Shandon credit for as much brains as all that.” “You must remember that I knew nothing about his brains,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I’d only seen him in circumstances where one doesn’t expect brains to come out very strong in most cases. I kept an open mind about him. All I admitted to myself was that Ernest Shandon hadn’t a cast-iron alibi after all.” “Very sound,” Ardsley commended. “You ought to be in the scientific line, Driffield. Some of us aren’t so cautious.” “Then came the burglary,” Sir Clinton went on. “On the face of it, it was possibly genuine, possibly a fake. It might have been a real attempt to get at something connected with the Hackleton case; or it might have been the usual blunder of a murderer trying to strengthen the case against someone else. I didn’t know at the moment. But when Miss Hawkhurst gave me back the tin of darts that morning and when I’d found by testing them that they weren’t my faked darts, then I had a pretty fair notion how things stood. The murderer had been careful not to steal the tin of darts outright. He’d given me back some _darts_ right enough; they had been faked like mine, only they hadn’t my litmus in them. “That told me two things straight away. The murderer was one of the people in the museum that night and—much more important than that—he had work still to do, for he wanted those darts at any price. That gave me some worry, I can tell you; for I couldn’t be absolutely certain that his teeth were drawn. He might have had a deadly dart or two in reserve for all I knew. It was a stiff business to be up against; and really I didn’t feel comfortable.” “Was that the time you were so perplexed?” Wendover asked. “Yes.” “I don’t wonder at it now.” Sir Clinton brushed this aside. “Now I’m coming to Ernest Shandon’s first big mistake. In telling me the story of the burglary, he dragged in a tale about the transactions relating to his late brother.”