“He’ll be at Naples in a day or two. I’ll wire him then, but I shouldn’t imagine he had lost anything worth the thief’s trouble,” said Tab. They went back to the sitting-room and Carver stood a long time by the table, tapping its covered surface nervously, his long face puckered in thought. “Do you know what I think?” he said suddenly. “Generally,” said Tab. “Do you know what I am thinking now?” “You think I am giving you a lot of trouble over a happening which wasn’t worth mentioning,” said Tab. Carver shook his head. “I am thinking this,” he said slowly and deliberately, “that the man who burgled this flat was the man who killed Jesse Trasmere! If you ask me to give chapter and verse for my conclusion I shall both disappoint you and disappoint myself. I have always found,” he went on, “that when one has an instinctive conviction, it is a mistake to make too close an examination of one’s mind. Every human being was endowed some time or other, with as powerful and potent an instinct as the most sensitive of wild animals. With the growth of reason, the instinctive quality faded, until today, in humanity, we find only the faintest trace of it. Yet,” he said earnestly, “it is possible for humanity to cultivate that germ of instinct so that one can go to a race-track and pick every winner.” “You are joking,” said Tab surprised, but Carver shook his head. “You get flashes of it at times; you call them ‘hunches’. It is really your atrophied instinct asserting itself. But you won’t give it a chance. You slay it with the hands of logic and smother it with argument, and my instinct tells me that the hand that opened Mr. Lander’s trunk was the hand that destroyed Trasmere. I had a queer feeling when you telephoned to me,” he went on, “a queer feeling as though you or somebody was going to hand to me a ready-made solution of Trasmere’s death.” “And you are disappointed. My poor old Carver,” said Tab, pityingly. “You think too much!” “We all think too much,” said Carver, relapsing into his natural gloom. The next morning the tenant who occupied the flat below came up whilst Tab was dressing and Mr. Holland was a little taken aback to see one who so seldom put in an appearance on any day. He was a red-faced gentleman, somewhat sportily attired. “I hope you didn’t mind my shouting up at you last night,” he said apologetically, “but I had been travelling night and day and I had had no sleep and naturally I was a little rattled when I heard that noise going on overhead. Did you drop a box or something?” “To be exact, I didn’t drop a box at all,” said Tab. “In fact, the noise you heard was made by a burglar.” “A burglar?” said the startled man. “I heard the row and it woke me up. I got out of bed and yelled up, as I thought, to you.” “What time was this?” “Between ten and half-past,” said the other. “It was just getting dark.”