“The thing doesn’t look like skipping quite as much as it did. For Heaven’s sake let’s beware of prejudicing the case. Anyhow, he meant to make for Glasgow on the Wednesday night—that’s to-morrow night, isn’t it? Now let’s have one more look at that silly list that was on the back of the anonymous letter.” The list had been copied almost in facsimile, for it was very short. It ran Socks vest hem tins— at least, that was the general impression it gave, but the writing was so spidery as to make it very doubtful which precise letter each of the strokes represented. “I suppose it must be a shopping-list of some sort. If one could make that last word ‘ties’ it would read better,” said Gordon. “But even so you wouldn’t have hems in a shopping-list.” “It might be ham.” “But one doesn’t buy ham at the hosier’s.” “And why did he write at the edge of the paper like that?” “If it comes to that, who was the he? It’s not Brotherhood’s writing—I’ve verified that from the club book. I fancy this goes pretty deep. Look here, here’s a bit of detection for you. That sheet has been torn off at the left-hand side, hasn’t it? Now, was it torn off before or after the writing was put on it?” “Before, surely. Otherwise the initial letters wouldn’t be so complete; he’d have been certain to tear across them.” “I’m not so sure. Who writes so close to the edge of a piece of paper as that? Remember, I copied the thing down exactly, and each word was close up against the tear.” “I don’t quite see what difference it makes, anyhow,” objected Gordon. “More than you think, perhaps. I shouldn’t wonder if this bit of paper turned up trumps, when we’ve thought it over a bit more. But there’s one thing that fairly beats me.” “What’s that?” “Those two watches. It doesn’t seem to me to make any sense. Well, we’d better get to bed and sleep over it.” Chapter IV Endless Clues There is no surer soporific than sleeping over a problem, no more fallacious method of attempting a solution. After murmuring to himself three times, “Let’s see; there was something about watches,” Mordaunt Reeves fell into a sleep which anybody but a psychoanalyst would have called dreamless. He woke in the morning with a strong resolution to do the ninth in four, which melted through lazy stages of half-awareness into the feeling that there was something else to do first. The adventures of yesterday, the duties of to-day, returned to him. He was already nearly dressed when he remembered that he had decided on the rôle of a _Daily Mail_ reporter for his morning’s investigation, and grimly set himself to remove again the bulging knickerbockers and the hypocritical garters of his kind. Dressy they might be, but they were not Fleet Street. His memories of the reporter’s wardrobe were, it must be confessed, somewhat disordered, and he was greeted in the breakfast-room with flippant inquiries whether he had gone into mourning for the Unknown Passenger.