your bust, Mr.
Harker?"

The disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a writing-table.

"I must try and make something of it," said he, "though I have no doubt
that the first editions of the evening papers are out already with
full details. It's like my luck! You remember when the stand fell at
Doncaster? Well, I was the only journalist in the stand, and my journal
the only one that had no account of it, for I was too shaken to write
it. And now I'll be too late with a murder done on my own doorstep."

As we left the room we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the
foolscap.

The spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only a
few hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon this
presentment of the great Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic
and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered in
splintered shards upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and
examined them carefully. I was convinced from his intent face and his
purposeful manner that at last he was upon a clue.

"Well?" asked Lestrade.

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

"We have a long way to go yet," said he. "And yet--and yet--well, we
have some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this trifling
bust was worth more in the eyes of this strange criminal than a human
life. That is one point. Then there is the singular fact that he did not
break it in the house, or immediately outside the house, if to break it
was his sole object."

"He was rattled and bustled by meeting this other fellow. He hardly knew
what he was doing."

"Well, that's likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very
particularly to the position of this house in the garden of which the
bust was destroyed."

Lestrade looked about him.

"It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be disturbed in
the garden."

"Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street which he
must have passed before he came to this one. Why did he not break it
there, since it is evident that every yard that he carried it increased
the risk of someone meeting him?"

"I give it up," said Lestrade.

Holmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.

"He could see what he was doing here and he could not there. That was
his reason."

"By Jove! that's true," said the detective. "Now that I come to think of
it, Dr. Barnicot's bust was broken not far from his red lamp. Well, Mr.
Holmes, what are