"We shall probably get there as soon as you, and it doesn't matter if we don't." "Yes, that will do," said Mr.Lawley; "you two walk down together.

Now let us go." We trooped out on to the pavement, beside which a four-wheeler was drawn up, and as the others were entering the cab, Thorndyke stood close beside me for a moment.
"Don't let him pump you," he said in a low voice, without looking at me; then he sprang into the cab and slammed the door.
"What an extraordinary affair this is," Walter Hornby remarked, after we had been walking in silence for a minute or two; "a most ghastly business.

I must confess that I can make neither head nor tail of it." "How is that ?" I asked.
"Why, do you see, there are apparently only two possible theories of the crime, and each of them seems to be unthinkable.

On the one hand there is Reuben, a man of the most scrupulous honour, as far as my experience of him goes, committing a mean and sordid theft for which no motive can be discovered--for he is not poor, nor pecuniarily embarrassed nor in the smallest degree avaricious.

On the other hand, there is this thumb-print, which, in the opinion of the experts, is tantamount to the evidence of an eye-witness that he did commit the theft.