out of the way as we walked up the path, to show me the place where
the photographic apparatus had been found embedded in the grass, and
where the murderer had cut his hands getting over the wall in his
frantic agitation. The wall was pretty high and protected with
bottle-glass. I guessed he must have been tall to scramble over it.
That seemed to tell against Jane's crude idea that a woman might
have done it.

But when I said so to Jane, she met me at once with the crushing
reply: "Perhaps it wasn't the same person that came back for the
box." I saw she was right again. I had jumped at a conclusion. In
cases like this, one must leave no hypothesis untried, jump at no
conclusions of any sort. Clearly, that woman ought to have been made
a detective.

As I entered the house the weird sense of familiarity that pursued
me throughout rose to a very high pitch. I couldn't fairly say,
indeed, that I remembered the different rooms. All I could say with
certainty was that I had seen them before. To this there were three
exceptions--the three that belonged to my Second State--the library,
my bedroom, and the hall and staircase. The first was indelibly
printed on my memory as a component part of the Picture, and I found
my recollection of every object in the room almost startling in its
correctness. Only, there was an alcove on one side that I'd quite
forgotten, and I saw why most clearly. I stood with my back to it as
I looked at the Picture. The other two bits I remembered as the room
in which I had had my first great illness, and the passage down
which I had been carried or helped when I was taken to Aunt Emma's.

I had begun to recognise now that the emotional impression made upon