He thought in pictures and he saw in scenes.

It was no fault of Langholm's, any more than it was a merit.
Imagination was the predominant force of his intellect, as in others is the power of reasoning, or the gift of languages, or the mastery of figures.

Langholm could no more help it than he could change the color of his eyes, but to-night he did his best.

He had mistaken invention for discovery once already.

He was grimly determined not to let it happen twice.
To suspect Steel because he chanced to have been in the neighborhood of Chelsea on the night of the murder, and absent from his hotel about the hour of its committal, was not less absurd than his first suspicion of the man who could be proved to have been lying between life and death at the time.