It was nearly filled with large pieces of marble. Freyberger whistled. “Mr Kolbecker said that wasn’t to be touched on no account,” said the woman. “It’s an old marble thing he broke up ’fore he went into the country.” Freyberger did not reply. He was examining the pieces of marble attentively. They were not simply rough lumps of marble; each was rough in part, and partly smooth, and he had not been examining them for more than half a minute when he discovered the fact that they were portions of a bust broken to pieces by Kolbecker, for some reason or other, before he made his mysterious journey to Cumberland under the name of Klein. He drew the drawer bodily out of the chest of drawers, placed it on the bed and sat down beside it. Yes, without doubt, these broken up pieces of marble once constituted the bust of a man. Here was part of the nose with the nostrils delicately chiselled, here the chin, here a piece of the forehead. Freyberger, dropping back into the drawer the pieces he had taken out, fell for a moment into a reverie. Kolbecker, the man whom Gyde had murdered, had suddenly assumed large proportions in his intuitive brain. What was the mystery surrounding this man? He had gone to Cumberland to blackmail Gyde, assuming the name of Klein, that was perfectly understandable. But why, in the name of common sense, had he left his blackmailing letters behind him? Gyde, driven to desperation, had murdered him. That, too, was understandable, but why the mutilation? How was it that he had so conveniently given Gyde the letter of introduction to his landlady, thus giving his murderer a burrow to hide in for the night? Lastly, why, before leaving for Cumberland, had he smashed the bust to pieces? All these queries suddenly had caused in the brain of Freyberger a new and absorbing interest. Kolbecker, this mysterious artist, now was the object of his undivided attention. In the past of Kolbecker, he felt, lay the solution of the mystery. This bust had been destroyed for some powerful motive. To find out the motive it would be necessary to reconstruct the bust and find out whom it represented, if possible, or what it represented. To put the thing together again would be an extraordinarily difficult piece of work. One man alone could do it, and Freyberger knew that man. In ordinary course of events this drawerful of marble fragments would be taken to the Yard and there placed with the other material evidence. But this involved loss of time. Freyberger felt, with a strange assurity, that in the thing lay a clue that might cast a strong light on the case. To take it direct to the Yard would mean loss of time. He determined on his own responsibility to take it to the man he knew direct.