“Yes,” he replied, “and a rather remarkable specimen. The hairs are of unusual length. Some of them, you see, are nearly eighteen inches long.” “And what are you going to do now?” I asked. “I am going to put it back where I found it. Then I shall run down to Scotland Yard and advise Miller to get a search warrant. He is too discreet to ask inconvenient questions.” I must admit that it was a great relief to me when, a minute later, Thorndyke came out and shut the door; but I could not deny that the raid had been justified by the results. What had, presumably, been a mere surmise had been converted into a definite fact on which action could confidently be taken. “I suppose,” said I, as we walked down towards the Embankment en route for Scotland Yard, “I ought to have spotted this case.” “You had the means,” Thorndyke replied. “At your first visit you learned that an object of some kind had disappeared from the wall. It seemed to be a trivial object of no value, and not likely to be connected with the crime. So you disregarded it. But it had disappeared. Its disappearance was not accounted for, and that disappearance seemed to coincide in time with the death of Herrington. It undoubtedly called for investigation. Then you found on the floor an object the nature of which was unknown to you. Obviously, you ought to have ascertained what it was.” “Yes, I ought,” I admitted, “though I am not sure that I should have been much forrarder even then. In fact, I am not so very much forrarder even now. I don’t see how you spotted this man Essien, and I don’t understand why he took all this trouble and risk and even committed a murder to get possession of this trumpery curio. Of course I can make a vague guess. But I should like to hear how you ran the man and the thing to earth.”