“The murder was committed by a man who, if not completely mad, was at least insane in his hatred of Hoode and Hoode’s. He was at the time of the murder an inmate of Abbotshall. He effected entrance to the study that night by letting himself down from the more easterly of the first-floor windows over the most easterly of the study windows. He spoke to Hoode, jokingly explaining his unceremonious entry. By some pretext (it would, you know, be easy enough) he got behind Hoode as he sat at his big table. Then he struck. “His object achieved, he carries out the plan he has been hatching for weeks. He sets the scene, overturning chairs, spilling papers, dragging the body to the hearth—and all as quietly as you please. He steps back, to regard with pleasure the result of his labours. “He overturns the clock, having moved the sofa to rest it upon. He moves back the hands of the clock until they stand at 10.45. A quarter to eleven, mark you! Not ten to, not twenty to, not twenty-three and a half minutes to—but a quarter to! “He gives a hasty glance round the room. Every thing is in order. He thrusts his head cautiously from the window. All is as he had calculated: there is nobody about; the night is sufficiently dark. He goes up his rope again and through that first-floor window. II “Having established our criminal as at least a monomaniac and an inhabitant—permanent or temporary—of the house, let us go further into detail. “First, as regards the finger-prints of which so much has been heard and so few have been seen. “Every one is satisfied that the murderer wore gloves, because nowhere else in the study, where he must have handled one thing after another, were any finger-prints found. They are found, these important pieces of evidence, upon the one object where their presence is utterly damning—and there only! “The spirals, whorls, and what-nots which compose these marks correspond exactly with those to be found in the skin and thumb and first two fingers of Archibald Deacon’s right hand. _Ergo_, say Police and Public, Archibald Deacon is the murderer. But I say that these finger-prints go a long way to prove (even without the rest of my evidence) that Deacon _cannot_ be the murderer. “Here is the one really clever murder (of those discovered) committed within the last fifteen years. Yet, if one take the popular view, one has to believe that the murderer, who was wise enough to wear gloves during the greater part of the time he was in the study, actually removed one of them and carefully pressed his thumb and fingers upon the highly receptive surface of his weapon’s handle before leaving that weapon in a nice easy place for the first policemen to find!