"Your diagnosis, I believe, is amazingly accurate," he said after a
moment, turning round with the map in his hands. "Though, of course, I
can have no idea how you should guess--"

John Silence shrugged his shoulders expressively. "Merely my
impression," he said. "If you pay attention to impressions, and do not
allow them to be confused by deductions of the intellect, you will often
find them surprisingly, uncannily, accurate."

Colonel Wragge resumed his seat and laid the map upon his knees. His
face was very thoughtful as he plunged abruptly again into his story.

"On coming into possession," he said, looking us alternately in the
face, "I found a crop of stories of the most extraordinary and
impossible kind I had ever heard--stories which at first I treated with
amused indifference, but later was forced to regard seriously, if only
to keep my servants. These stories I thought I traced to the fact of my
brother's death--and, in a way, I think so still."

He leant forward and handed the map to Dr. Silence.

"It's an old plan of the estate," he explained, "but accurate enough for
our purpose, and I wish you would note the position of the plantations
marked upon it, especially those near the house. That one," indicating
the spot with his finger, "is called the Twelve Acre Plantation. It was
just there, on the side nearest the house, that my brother and the head
keeper met their deaths."

He spoke as a man forced to recognise facts that he deplored, and would