It was a sign of deep dissatisfaction with the progress of the Brooklyn case that the superintendent now took his troubles home to his wife. He found her, in the pleasant sitting-room of their house facing Clapham Common, placidly knitting woollies for the children in anticipation of the coming winter. From the garden came the noise of the children themselves, playing a game which involved repeated shouts of “Bang, bang, bang!” as the rival armies engaged. “My dear. I want to consult you,” he said, coming up and kissing her. Mrs. Wilson laid down her knitting on the table beside her, and composed herself to listen. “It’s about this Brooklyn case. I suppose you’ve read about it in the papers. I’m working on it, you know.” Mrs. Wilson, who confined her newspaper reading to a glance at the pictures and headlines in the _Daily Graphic_, had barely heard of the case, and knew none of the details. Her husband therefore began by giving her a brief, but perfectly clear, account of the circumstances of the crimes. It helped to clear his own mind, and to put the essential facts in their proper focus. “How dreadful!” was Mrs. Wilson’s appropriate comment at various points in the story. “And who did it?” she asked when her husband had done, smiling at him as if he were certain to know. “My dear, if I knew that, I shouldn’t need to consult you. Blaikie feels quite certain it was Walter Brooklyn, old Sir Vernon’s brother. I’d better tell you just what there is against him.” And the superintendent gave an account of the evidence leading to the presumption of Walter Brooklyn’s guilt—the walking-stick, his failure to explain his movements on the night of the murders, his very strong motive for the crimes, and finally, the telephone message sent from Liskeard House on the fatal evening. “But you say he didn’t do it. Then who did?” asked his wife. “No, my dear, I didn’t say he didn’t do it. All I say is that I’m not satisfied that he did.” “But you say he sent the telephone message——” “Even if he did send the message, that doesn’t prove that he committed the murders. He may have been there, and yet some one else may be the murderer. But I’m not even sure that he ever did send the message.” “If he didn’t send it, some one else did.” “Yes, my dear, that’s the very point. But if it was some one else, then that some one was deliberately trying to incriminate Walter Brooklyn.” “That is what you call laying a false clue, isn’t it?” “Yes, but the trouble is that, if the telephone and the walking-stick are false clues, we have to deal with two quite different sets of false clues, both deliberately laid, and pointing to quite different conclusions as to the murderer. Is that possible?” The superintendent paused, and looked at his wife. But instead of answering, she got up and went to the window. “Georgie,” she said, “you mustn’t pull the cat’s tail. If you’re not good I shall send you to bed.” Then she came back to her seat. “Yes, dear, you were saying——”