"`Possibly four or five?'

"`Yes.'

"`What was he doing during that time?'

"`I do not know,' she answered, turning white to her very lips.

"Of course after that there was nothing more to be done.
I found out where Lieutenant Charpentier was, took two officers
with me, and arrested him. When I touched him on the
shoulder and warned him to come quietly with us, he answered
us as bold as brass, `I suppose you are arresting me for
being concerned in the death of that scoundrel Drebber,'
he said. We had said nothing to him about it, so that his
alluding to it had a most suspicious aspect."

"Very," said Holmes.

"He still carried the heavy stick which the mother described
him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a
stout oak cudgel."

"What is your theory, then?"

"Well, my theory is that he followed Drebber as far as the
Brixton Road. When there, a fresh altercation arose between
them, in the course of which Drebber received a blow from the
stick, in the pit of the stomach, perhaps, which killed him