nce that he murdered his late master?"

"I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn't say so. We all have our little
ways. You try yours and I will try mine. That's the agreement."

Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together. "I can't
make the man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well, as he says,
we must each try our own way and see what comes of it. But there's
something in Inspector Baynes which I can't quite understand."

"Just sit down in that chair, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes when we had
returned to our apartment at the Bull. "I want to put you in touch
with the situation, as I may need your help to-night. Let me show you
the evolution of this case so far as I have been able to follow it.
Simple as it has been in its leading features, it has none the less
presented surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest. There are
gaps in that direction which we have still to fill.

"We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the
evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes's that
Garcia's servants were concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies
in the fact that it was _he_ who had arranged for the presence of Scott
Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi.
It was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal
enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death.
I say 'criminal' because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires
to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his
life? Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was
directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.

"We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia's household.
They were _all_ confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off
when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the
Englishman's evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a
dangerous one, and if Garcia did _not_ return by a certain hour it was
probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged,
therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for
some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a
position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain
the facts, would it not?"

The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I
wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obviou