“You must remember in the first place that I couldn’t be in the least sure it was your son; in the second, if murder had been intended, murder would have been done with as little delay in his case as in the others; thirdly, that we’ve nothing to show that Dr. Baumgartner is an actual murderer at all, but, fourthly, that to raid his place was the way to make him one. Poor Mullins, too, as the original Sherlock of the show, was desperately against calling in the police under any circumstances. He assured me there was no sign of bad blood about the house, until the small hours, and then he saw your son make his escape. I told him he should have collared the lad, but he lost sight of him in the night and preferred to keep an eye on that poor desperate doctor.” Thrush treated this part of his narrative with the peculiar confidence which most counsel reserve for the less satisfactory aspects of their case. But Mr. Upton was not in a mood to press a point of grievance against anybody. And the name of Mullins reminded him that his curiosity on a very different point had not been gratified. “Why on earth did you have Mullins run in?” he inquired, with characteristic absence of finesse. “I’m not very proud of it,” replied Thrush. “It didn’t come off, you see.” “But whatever could the object have been?” “I must have a damn-it if I’m to tell you that,” said Thrush; and the ironmaster concluded that he meant a final drink, from the action which he suited to the oath. “It was one way that occurred to me of putting salt on the lad.” “Tony?” “Yes.” “You puzzle me more and more.” “Well, you see, I gathered that he was a particularly honourable boy, of fine sensibilities, and yet Mullins thought he had shot this man by accident and was lying low. I only thought that, if that were so, the news of an innocent man’s arrest would bring him into the open as quick as anything. Mullins proving amenable to terms, and having really been within a hundred miles of both murders at the time they were committed, the rest was elementary. But what’s the good of talking about it? It didn’t come off.” “It very nearly did! I can tell you that straight from Tony; he was going to give himself up yesterday morning, if he hadn’t accidentally satisfied himself of his own innocence.” Mr. Upton said more than this, but it was the explicit statement of fact that alone afforded Thrush real consolation. His spectacled eyes blinked keenly behind their flashing lenses; the button of a nose underneath twitched as though it scented battle once again; and the drink with the opprobrious name was suddenly put down unfinished. “If only I could find that camera!” he cried. “It’s the touchstone of the whole thing, mark my words. If it’s an accomplice who did this thing, he’s got it; even if not——” He stood silenced by a sudden thought, a gleam of light that illumined his whole flushed face.