"How on earth--" he gasped. "Do you mean to say that you know--"

"Nothing at present, I assure you," Bell said, coolly. "Call it
intuition, if you like. I prefer to call it the result of logical mental
process. I'm right, of course?"

"Of course you are. I'd claimed that case for my own. I had cut my
initials inside, as I showed Marley when I went to the police-station.
And then Marley tells me how I paid Mossa nearly L1,000; how the money
must have come into my hands in the nick of time. That was pretty bad
when I couldn't for the life of me give a lucid reason for the possession
of those notes; but there was worse to come. In the pocket of the injured
man was a receipt for a diamond-studded gun-metal cigar-case, purchased
the day of the outrage. And Walen, the jeweller, proved beyond a doubt
that the case I claimed was purchased at his shop."

Bell nodded gravely.

"Which places you in an exceedingly awkward position," he said.

"A mild way of putting it," David replied. "If that fellow dies the
police have enough evidence to hang me. And what is my defence? The story
of my visit to No. 219. And who would believe that cock-and-bull story?
Fancy a drama like that being played out in the house of such a pillar of
respectability as Gilead Gates."

"It isn't his house," said Bell. "He only takes it furnished."

"In anybody else your remark would be puerile," David said, irritably.