During breakfast he talked and Freyberger listened. He talked of the bargains he had made, of the sales he had attended, of the men he had seen swindled, omitting, by some lapse of memory, the men he had swindled. He talked of modern and ancient art. “Sculptors,” he said; “the race has vanished. Except the unknown man who chiselled that bust I have just repaired, I know of no living sculptor.” “You knew Sir Anthony Gyde well?” asked Freyberger. “I knew him for years,” replied the art dealer, through whose brains the fumes of the chianti he had drunk were pleasantly straying; “for years; and mark you this, Mr Freyberger, I don’t believe that man could have committed a murder, unless he went mad.” “Why not?” “He had not the eyes of a murderer, the cheek bones of a murderer, or the thumbs of a murderer.” “Oh, you are evidently a dilettante in murder.” “No, I am not, but I am a man of the world, and I have seen much of people. Sir Anthony Gyde—God help me! I sold him a Corot once that was—well, no matter. What was I saying? Oh yes! murderers, as a rule, are men with blue eyes, pale blue eyes. A murderer ought to have broad, flat cheekbones, it’s a desperate bad sign in a man; Gyde had neither of these points, nor the thumbs. Tropmann had enormous thumbs, but it is not so much the size of the thumb as the character of it. I can’t describe a brutal thumb no more than I can describe a beautiful face, but I know it when I see it. A glass of Benedictine, please. Murderers come into my shop, I won’t say every day, but often. My dear friend, the world is full of them. You will ask, if that is so why are so comparatively few murders committed? For this reason, very few people have the motive for slaying a fellow man or woman. I myself cannot remember a single time in my life when the commission of a murder would have benefited me much, and when that murder could have been committed by me with reasonable chance of not being discovered. “Yes, want of motive and fear of the gallows, which is stronger in man than the fear of God, keeps numerous people from figuring in wax in the Chamber of Horrors of Madame Tussaud’s. But want of motive chiefly—” Freyberger paid the bill, and leaving the gruesome old man to his cigarettes and Benedictine, returned to the Yard. He felt himself a step nearer to that unseen adversary, whose subtleties he was disclosing piecemeal. Why had Kolbecker a bust of Sir Anthony Gyde in his possession, a bust most possibly constructed by himself? Why had he destroyed it? It was only another unanswerable question amidst the many unanswerable questions contained in this mysterious case, but in it Freyberger felt, by instinct, lay the answer to all the other questions and the solution of the whole riddle. So completely had the dominating mind with which he was at war succeeded in its work, that every clue the case presented added confusion to confusion.