"Again I heard from Harkville that Kull, after a brief stay at home, following his having been in Griffin, was once more out of town. I was busy with other matters and did not immediately take up the threads of the case again. I was about to do so yesterday," and here Mr. Rack smiled toward Mr. Wagg, who sat with eyes and mouth open, his glasses perched on the very top of his bald head,--"when Mr. Phil and Mr. David, here, came in upon me, introduced by one of our best young lawyers. They were in possession of so much information that, dovetailing their statements with my own previous knowledge, I had a fairly perfect fabric of fact. From this it was simply a little study to deduce practically certain probabilities. However, I spent a few hours piecing out and verifying my threads of information. I found that Kull's poor mother could probably live but a few days or weeks, at most. I found a man named Coster had been locked up for intoxication here in Griffin, that he was first seen in town on Saturday and his clothing was splashed with mud. Friday was a rainy day, you will remember. By the merest chance my Harkville representative also learned yesterday that Kull had purchased some saws for cutting steel before leaving town on Tuesday. He had bought a ticket for Batavia, but that was no certain sign that he would not stop off in Griffin. "To see through the man's entire plan now is, of course, like reading it in print. All that we do not know is just how Coster happened to lose the Torpedo, then pick up the car of our friends here, which certainly he did. That we will learn later. The point I would bring to your notice now is that Kull, whatever his first plan may have been, changed somewhat his course of action as he found circumstances favoring him. He had learned of Coster reaching Griffin in an intoxicated condition and being locked up. He enabled him to escape by passing saws in to him by means of a long stick put between the bars of the rear corridor window, which was open. This he did last night, Mr. Fobes believes, and he probably is correct. "It is an interesting fact, but not a strange one, for usually it is the small thing that trips the criminal up,--an interesting fact, observe, that the dog Kull had been at such pains to be rid of in Harkville, lest it innocently betray the spot where his car had been concealed, had appeared here in Griffin to trouble him. To regain possession of the Torpedo (after having failed to get it placed in a barn where he could more easily get at it) Kull found it necessary to kill the Scotch collie. This he did on Sunday night. It was also desirable that Mr. Creek be placed beyond power to hinder. An anonymous telephone call from Port Greeley, summoning him there, did the work nicely.