Circumstantial Evidence

"No," he answered. "Two years is a short period of absence; but still, it might easily have gone the other way. I am greatly relieved. The respite gives us time to carry out our investigations without undue hurry."

"Did you find my notes of any use?" I asked.

"Heath did. Polton handed them to him, and they were invaluable to him for his cross-examination. I haven't seen them yet; in fact, I have only just got them back from him. Let us go through them together now."

He opened a drawer, and taking from it my note-book, seated himself, and began to read through my notes with grave attention, while I stood and looked shyly over his shoulder. On the page that contained my sketches of the Sidcup arm, showing the distribution of the snails' eggs on the bones, he lingered with a faint smile that made me turn hot and red.

"Those sketches look rather footy," I said; "but I had to put something in my note-book."

"You didn't attach any importance, then, to the facts that they illustrated?"

"No. The egg-patches were there, so I noted the fact. That's all."

"I congratulate you, Berkeley. There is not one man in twenty who would have the sense to make a careful note of what he considers an unimportant or irrelevant fact; and the investigator who notes only those things that appear significant is perfectly useless. He gives himself no material for reconsideration. But you don't mean that these egg-patches and worm-tubes appeared to you to have no significance at all?"