You may be sure that none of us--save only Dr Watson, whose snores shook the partitions--slept much that night. We were all awake with daylight, and eager for news. It came, presently, with the astounding information that Mr Holmes, returning to the house in the early hours of the morning, had ordered incontinently a fly for the station, and had left in it before any of us were down. We stared at one another in mute consternation. But Dr Watson, when he appeared, took the thunderbolt unruffled. This sudden disappearance was only, in his opinion, part of the plot. Likely enough the tracks had led his friend to Footover. In the meantime he laid himself out to enjoy his respite in the consumption of much excellent fare and tobacco, to which latter indulgence he never resorted without first fitting on his head an embroidered black velvet smoking-cap with a large gold tassel pendent from its crown. His engagements, he said, left him free till Easter, when he was to take his usual little holiday at Clacton-on-Sea. No doubt there would be developments in a day or two. But there were no developments, not that day nor the next, and we were beginning to foresee a difficulty in ridding ourselves of this self-complacent incubus, when there arrived a letter to him from Mr Holmes, which settled the business. He read it, and, in a fit, I cannot but think, of temporary aberration, threw it across to Mr Shapter. It ran as follows:-- “My Dear Watson,--I find this must be counted among my unsuccessful cases. I am under the necessity of admitting that the footmarks I have been following were my own. I traced them all the way to the “Black Dog,” and so up the stairs to my bedroom, where the boots themselves lay under a chair. _En passant_, why did you never remind me, my dear Watson, that they were a pair of yours which I had borrowed, and put off for some of my own when I went out for the second time? It was that misled me. Make my apologies to our friends. I enclose the half of your third-class return ticket, and am off to Siberia by the night mail. An important political prisoner has escaped from Kara Baigarama. I believe him to be hidden under an ice-floe in the Arctic Ocean. Tell this to nobody.” Mr Shapter looked across at Dr Watson, who had sunk back in his chair, with a piece of bloater sticking out of his mouth. He gasped and swallowed it. “I believe,” he said, “that that fall into the river gave him water on the brain.” CHAPTER XXXII. RUN TO EARTH “I have to tell you, Jannaway,” said Mr Shapter, “that your colleague has deserted you.” “Indeed, sir?” “He has driven away this morning to catch the early express. Disillusioned for ever, he told me, as to our police methods, disappointed in his one cherished ideal, he has gone to London, to deliver his report and state his case before the court of final appeal as represented by our employer, Mr Dando.” “Very well, sir. Then, p’raps its time as _we_ got to business.”