found the house. The man must have known that particular house
to be so accurately inaccurate."

"But what could it mean?" demanded the diner opposite.

"I can't conceive," said Brown; "I don't understand this Hirsch
affair at all. As long as it was only the left drawer instead of
the right, and red ink instead of black, I thought it must be the
chance blunders of a forger, as you say. But three is a mystical number;
it finishes things. It finishes this. That the direction about
the drawer, the colour of ink, the colour of envelope, should none of
them be right by accident, that can't be a coincidence. It wasn't."

"What was it, then? Treason?" asked Flambeau, resuming his dinner.

"I don't know that either," answered Brown, with a face
of blank bewilderment. "The only thing I can think of....
Well, I never understood that Dreyfus case. I can always grasp
moral evidence easier than the other sorts. I go by a man's eyes and voice,
don't you know, and whether his family seems happy, and by what
subjects he chooses--and avoids. Well, I was puzzled in the Dreyfus case.
Not by the horrible things imputed both ways; I know (though it's not
modern to say so) that human nature in the highest places is still capable
of being Cenci or Borgia. No--, what puzzled me was the sincerity
of both parties. I don't mean the political parties; the rank and file
are always roughly honest, and often duped. I mean the persons
of the play. I mean the conspirators, if they were conspirators.
I mean the traitor, if he was a traitor. I mean the men who must have
known the truth. Now Dreyfus went on like a man who knew he was
a wronged man. And yet the French statesmen and soldiers went on