m as the murderer,
and he determined to abscond before he could be arrested?"

"So that's your way of looking at it, eh, Rolfe?" said Inspector
Chippenfield quizzically.

"Certainly it is," responded Rolfe, not a little nettled by his chief's
contemptuous tone. "It's as plain as a pikestaff that the jury acquitted
Birchill because they believed Hill was guilty. Holymead made out too
strong a case for them to get away from--Hill's lies about the plan and
the fact that the body was fully dressed when discovered."

"You're a young man, Rolfe," responded Inspector Chippenfield in a
tolerant tone, "but you'll have to shed this habit of jumping impulsively
to conclusions--and generally wrong conclusions--if you want to succeed
in Scotland Yard. This letter of Hill's only strengthens my previous
opinion that a damned muddle-headed jury let a cold-blooded murderer
loose on the world when they acquitted Fred Birchill of the charge of
shooting Sir Horace Fewbanks. Why, man alive, Holymead no more believes
Hill is guilty than I do. He set himself to bamboozle the jury and he
succeeded. If he had to defend Hill to-morrow he would show the jury that
Hill couldn't have committed the murder and that it must have been
committed by Birchill and no one else. He's a clever man, far cleverer
than Walters, and that is why I lost the case."

"He led Hill into a trap about the plan of Riversbrook," said Rolfe.
"When I saw that Hill had been trapped on that point I felt we had lost
the jury."

"Only because the jury were a pack of fools who knew nothing about
evidence. Granted that Hill lied about the plan--that he drew it up
voluntarily in his spare time to assist Birchill--it proves nothing. It
doesn't prove that Hill committed the murder. It only proves that Hill
was going to share in the proceeds of the burglary; that he was a willing
party to it. The one big outstanding fact in all the evidence, the fact
that towered over all the others, is that Birchill broke into the house
on the night Sir Horace Fewbanks was murdered. The defence made no
attempt to get away from that fact because they could not do so. But
Holymead vamped up all sorts of surmises and suppositions for the purpose
of befogging the jury and getting their minds away from the outstanding
feature of the case for the prosecution. We proved that Birchill was in
the house on a criminal errand. What more could they expect us to prove?
They couldn't expect us to have a man lo