I went on reading out the notes until I came to the final one:

"'Nine twenty-four. South-east. In covered way. Stop. Wooden gates
closed.'"

Thorndyke ruled off the last line, remarking: "Then your covered way is
on the south side of a street which bears north-east. So we complete our
chart. Just look at your route, Jervis."

He held up the board with a quizzical smile and I stared in astonishment
at the chart. The single line, which represented the route of the
carriage, zigzagged in the most amazing manner, turning, re-turning and
crossing itself repeatedly, evidently passing more than once down the
same thoroughfares and terminating at a comparatively short distance
from its commencement.

"Why!" I exclaimed, the "rascal must have lived quite near to
Stillbury's house!"

Thorndyke measured with the dividers the distance between the starting
and arriving points of the route and took it off from the scale.

"Five-eighths of a mile, roughly," he said. "You could have walked it in
less than ten minutes. And now let us get out the ordnance map and see
if we can give to each of those marvellously erratic lines 'a local
habitation and a name.'"

He spread the map out on the table and placed our chart by its side.