I brought that young fellow into No. 17, and watched the story of the
tragedy reshaping itself in his imagination. That is why, too, I spoke
of the ivory skull. Think what it means to one with the writer's
temperament. The skull will never leave his mind's eye. It will focus
and control his thoughts and actions. And I feel it in my bones that
only by keeping in touch with Mr. Francis Theydon shall we solve the
Innesmore Mansions mystery. I can't explain why I think this, no more
than the receiver of a wireless message can account for the waves of
energy it picks up from the void and transmutes into the ordered
sequences of the Morse code. All I know is that when I am near him I
am, as the children say, 'warm,' and when away from him, 'cold.' While
he was examining the skull I was positively 'hot,' and was half
inclined to treat him as a thought transference medium and order him
sternly to speak.... No. Be calm! I even bid you be honest. When have
you, ever before, admitted an outsider to your councils? And, if you
make an exception of Theydon, why are you doing it?"

Winter bit the end off a cigar with a vicious jerk of his round head.
He struck a match and created such a volume of smoke that Furneaux
coughed affectedly.

"The real clew," he said at last, "rests with the gray car. What did
you make of that?"

"That, my bulky friend, will figure in my memory as a reproach for
many a year. When, if ever, I am tempted to preen myself on some
peculiarly close piece of ratiocinative reasoning, I shall say:
'Little man, pigmy, remember the gray car.'"

"You think that some one had the impudence to follow us, watch us in