"Couldn't be better. The very thing. Ah! Here comes my baggage." And the others saw a policeman bicycling up the avenue, with a small portmanteau balanced precariously between the handlebars and the front buttons of his tunic. "You gentlemen will dine in my room, I hope?" said Tomlinson, when he had escorted them upstairs. "We are not invited to the family circle, at any rate," said Winter. "Well, you will not suffer on that account," announced Tomlinson genially. "Of course, I shall not have the pleasure of sharing the meal with you, but dinner will be served at a quarter to eight. Mr. Furneaux knows his way about the house, so, with your permission, I'll leave you at present. If you're disengaged at nine thirty I'll be glad to see you in my sanctum." "Isn't he a gem?" cried Furneaux, when the door had closed, and he and Winter were alone. Winter sat down on the side of a bed. He was worried, and did not strive to hide it. For the first time in his life he felt distrustful of himself, and he suspected, too, that Furneaux was only covering abject failure by a display of high spirits. "Why so pensive an attitude, James?" inquired the other softly. "Are you still wondering what the extrados of a voussoir is?" "I don't care a tuppenny damn what it is." "But that's where you're wrong. That's where you're crass and pig-headed. The extrados of a voussoir----" "Oh, kill it, and let it die happy----" "--is the outer curve of a wedge-shaped stone used for building an arch. Now, mark you, those are words of merit. Wedge, arch--wedges of fact which shall construct the arch of evidence. We'll have our man in the dock across that bridge before we are much older." "Confound it, how? He couldn't be in his bedroom and in the Quarry Wood, four hundred yards away, at one and the same moment." Furneaux gazed fixedly at his friend's forehead, presumably the seat of reason. "Sometimes, James, you make me gasp with an amazed admiration," he cooed. "You do, really. You arrive at the same conclusion as I, a thinker, without any semblance of thought process on your part. How do you manage it! Is it through association with me? You know, there's such a thing as inductive electricity. A current passing through a highly charged wire can excite another wire, even a common iron one, without actual contact." "I've had a rotten afternoon, and don't feel up to your far-fetched jokes just now; so if you have nothing to report, shut up," said the Superintendent crossly.