Just look at your route, Jervis." He held up the board with a quizzical smile and I stared in astonishment at the chart.

The single line, which represented the route of the carriage, zigzagged in the most amazing manner, turning, re-turning and crossing itself repeatedly, evidently passing more than once down the same thoroughfares and terminating at a comparatively short distance from its commencement.
"Why!" I exclaimed, the "rascal must have lived quite near to Stillbury's house!" Thorndyke measured with the dividers the distance between the starting and arriving points of the route and took it off from the scale.
"Five-eighths of a mile, roughly," he said.

"You could have walked it in less than ten minutes.

And now let us get out the ordnance map and see if we can give to each of those marvellously erratic lines 'a local habitation and a name.'" He spread the map out on the table and placed our chart by its side.
"I think," said he, "you started from Lower Kennington Lane ?" "Yes, from this point," I replied, indicating the spot with a pencil.
"Then," said Thorndyke, "if we swing the chart round twenty degrees to correct the deviation of the compass, we can compare it with the ordnance map." He set off with the protractor an angle of twenty degrees from the north and south line and turned the chart round to that extent.

After closely scrutinizing the map and the chart and comparing the one with the other, he said: "By mere inspection it seems fairly easy to identify the thoroughfares that correspond to the lines of the chart.