of the room was rolled a gentleman's silk top hat, as if it had
just been knocked off his head; so much so, indeed, that one almost looked
to see it still rolling. And in the corner behind it, thrown like a sack
of potatoes, but corded like a railway trunk, lay Mr James Todhunter,
with a scarf across his mouth, and six or seven ropes knotted round
his elbows and ankles. His brown eyes were alive and shifted alertly.

Dr Orion Hood paused for one instant on the doormat and drank in
the whole scene of voiceless violence. Then he stepped swiftly
across the carpet, picked up the tall silk hat, and gravely put it
upon the head of the yet pinioned Todhunter. It was so much too large
for him that it almost slipped down on to his shoulders.

"Mr Glass's hat," said the doctor, returning with it and peering
into the inside with a pocket lens. "How to explain the absence
of Mr Glass and the presence of Mr Glass's hat? For Mr Glass is not a
careless man with his clothes. That hat is of a stylish shape and
systematically brushed and burnished, though not very new.
An old dandy, I should think."

"But, good heavens!" called out Miss MacNab, "aren't you going to
untie the man first?"

"I say `old' with intention, though not with certainty"
continued the expositor; "my reason for it might seem a little far-fetched.
The hair of human beings falls out in very varying degrees,
but almost always falls out slightly, and with the lens I should see
the tiny hairs in a hat recently worn. It has none, which leads me
to guess that Mr Glass is bald. Now when this is taken with
the high-pitched and querulous voice which Miss MacNab described