“Well, look here, Gordon, I’ve been seeing Miss Rendall-Smith, and she’s been giving me a whole lot of information. Come and sit in my room for a bit, and let me get it clear; then we can think the case out all over again.” Gordon was not impressed by the recital of Miss Rendall-Smith’s disclosures. “It seems to me,” he said, “that every word of that makes the case against Davenant stronger instead of weaker. The one thing we had still to look for was a motive, and here’s a motive ready-made. Davenant had every temptation to want Brotherhood out of the way; it would rid the world of a worm, and leave the course clear for him to marry the widow. I hope she won’t go and tell all that story to the counsel for the defence.” “But what impressed me,” objected Reeves, “was this—nobody knew more clearly than Miss Rendall-Smith what temptation Davenant had had to commit the murder, and yet nobody could have been more positive about Davenant’s innocence. What I mean is this: isn’t the strength of the _prima facie_ evidence for his guilt the strongest possible test of her belief in Davenant’s innocence?” “_Credo quia impossibile_, you mean? Well, personally, I don’t attach very much importance to the lady’s feelings.” “I think that’s very inconsistent of you, Gordon. Only the other day you were saying you would rather trust the evidence of people than the evidence of things.” “But her feelings aren’t evidence. I’m willing enough to trust in what she knows about Davenant; but I’m not willing to trust in what she says she thinks she has persuaded herself to think she knows about Davenant. And that is about the correct description, I should say, for a woman’s intuition.” “Oh, come! You must have a little more imagination than that.” “Well, look here, she says she trusts her intuitions, and wants you to trust them. She says she always does trust them and they never fail her. Now, this is the woman who, with her eyes open, went and married a dirty little sharper like Brotherhood. If women’s intuitions were worth anything, wouldn’t she have had an intuition which told her she was throwing herself away on a nasty little worm?” “Well, let’s leave her intuitions alone. I want to start out with an absolutely unbiassed mind, with no presumption for Davenant or against him. And I want you to help me to go through all the evidence we collected, and see if we can’t make sense out of it somehow. Because we haven’t done that yet, Davenant or no Davenant.” “You mean you want to do some thinking aloud, while I sit opposite you and say ‘My dear Reeves! How on earth . . .’ from time to time? All right; start away.” “Well, look here, what was the most incongruous thing we found, when we examined Brotherhood’s body?” “You mean me to say the two watches. To my mind it’s the fact of his having a ticket. Because he surely had a season?” “He did. I went and asked specially at the booking-office. But of course he might have left his at home by mistake.”