"Now come along," he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked down
something rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to Brunswick
Square exactly the same way as you approached it on the night of the
great adventure."




CHAPTER IX

THE BROKEN FIGURE


"Any particular object in that course?" David asked.

"There ought to be an object in everything that even an irrational man
says or does," Bell replied. "I have achieved some marvellous results by
following up a single sentence uttered by a patient. Besides, on the
evening in question you were particularly told to approach the house from
the sea front."

"Somebody might have been on the look-out near the Western Road
entrance," Steel suggested.

"Possibly. I have another theory.... Here we are. The figures over the
fanlights run from 187 upwards, gradually getting to 219 as you breast
the slope. At one o'clock in the morning every house would be in
darkness. Did you find that to be so?"