p up to
concert pitch forever. To return to the case. The evidence of the chopper
was very untrustworthy, especially when I had heard of Goujon's careless
habits--losing shovels and leaving coal-scuttles on stairs. Nothing more
likely than for the chopper to be left lying about, and a criminal who had
calculated his chances would know the advantage to himself of using a
weapon that belonged to the place, and leaving it behind to divert
suspicion. It is quite possible, by the way, that the man who attacked
Rameau got away down the coal-lift and out by an adjoining basement, just
as did Rameau himself; this, however, is mere conjecture. The would-be
murderer had plainly prepared for the crime: witness the previous
preparation of the paper declaring his revenge, an indication of his pride
at having run his enemy to earth at such a distant place as this--although
I expect he was only in England by chance, for Haytians are not a
persistently energetic race. In regard to the use of small instead of
capital letters in the words 'La Tortue' on the paper, I observed, in the
beginning, that the first letter of the whole sentence--the 'p' in
'puni'--was a small one. Clearly, the writer was an illiterate man, and it
was at once plain that he may have made the same mistake with ensuing
words.

"On the whole, it was plain that everybody had begun with a too ready
disposition to assume that Goujon was guilty. Everybody insisted, too,
that the body had been carried away--which was true, of course, although
not in the sense intended--so I didn't trouble to contradict, or to say
more than that I guessed who _had_ carried the body off. And, to tell you
the truth, I was a little piqued at Mr. Styles' manner, and indisposed,
interested in the case as I was, to give away my theories too freely.

"The rest of the job was not very difficult. I found out the cabman who
had taken Rameau away--you can always get readier help from cabbies if you
go as one of themselves, especially if you are after a bilker--and from
him got a sufficiently near East End direction to find Rameau after
inquiries. I ventured, by the way, on a rather long shot. I described my
man to the cabman as having an injured arm or wrist--and it turned out a
correct guess. You see, a man making an attack with a chopper is pretty
certain to make more than a single blow, and as there appeared to have
been only a single wound on the head, it seemed probable that another had
fallen