In full view of the Weston family Palmer took his seat in the car, closed the door, and nodded reply to the chauffeur’s “All right, sir?”――nevertheless, this was not the way he would have managed things himself. Much better to have done it quietly on the following evening, and without sending the car at all. For Palmer was, after his own fashion, a true artist, and showiness did not appeal to him, though there might be a bit of swagger when the work was done. He felt no admiration, rather a good-natured contempt, for those who run unnecessary risks, and if he sometimes modelled his manner upon that of certain story-book heroes, he did so simply to satisfy his dramatic instinct, and only when there was no danger of its interfering with his plans. The whole thing was a game, an elaborate and curious game. Those day-dreams in which Inspector X. of Scotland Yard happily remarked, ‘It’s well for us, Mr. Dorset, you’re on the side of the law!’ were really but a survival from the period when he had sailed under the skull and cross-bones, or taken to the road on a coal-black stallion, a true minion of the moon. He had been frightfully lucky, he considered, to have chanced on these two cases――mentally he always referred to the unfortunate George as a case――the only drawback had been their simplicity. He had been frightfully lucky, even though the cases were not up to the standard of those he sometimes conducted in imagination. Of course, for the real thing, he was badly handicapped. He had no electric torch, no disguises, no burglar’s kit, no means of taking casts of footprints, no chemicals by which to secure the prints of fingers. The persons he pursued did _not_ drop cigarette ashes, and if they had done so, he couldn’t see how it would have helped matters. George, if he smoked cigarettes at all, almost certainly smoked Woodbines:――and at any rate establishment of identity was not the question in either case. It was of no importance whether Mr. Bradley left finger-prints on the church music, of no importance that there was a slight twitching in his left eyelid――all such things availed nothing: he had to work at present on the impalpable stuff of intuition and imagination. It might, for instance, be important that Mr. Bradley appeared, as he walked along the road, now and then to cast a furtive glance at some invisible thing beside him. Palmer had had a little talk with Aunt Caroline that afternoon before tea, and he had tried an experiment with Grif――a very small one, it is true, for he had been mortally afraid of going too far――but the results had left him nothing solid to work upon. How could they? he reflected, since a sane mind cannot possibly put itself into touch with an insane one, cannot follow a reasoning which itself follows no law. It was like trying to catch a will-o’-the-wisp, or build walls round a mirage.