I don't think that either
Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner has grasped the
overwhelming importance of this incident. One dumb-bell, Watson!
Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell! Picture to yourself the
unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature.
Shocking, Watson, shocking!"

He sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling with
mischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sight of his
excellent appetite was an assurance of success, for I had very clear
recollections of days and nights without a thought of food, when his
baffled mind had chafed before some problem while his thin, eager
features became more attenuated with the asceticism of complete mental
concentration. Finally he lit his pipe, and sitting in the inglenook of
the old village inn he talked slowly and at random about his case,
rather as one who thinks aloud than as one who makes a considered
statement.

"A lie, Watson--a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising
lie--that's what meets us on the threshold! There is our starting
point. The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker's story is
corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. They are
both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clear problem. Why
are they lying, and what is the truth which they are trying so hard to
conceal? Let us try, Watson, you and I, if we can get behind the lie
and reconstruct the truth.

"How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy fabrication
which simply could not be true. Consider! According to the story given
to us, the assassin had less than a minute after the murder had been
committed to take that ring, which was under another ring, from the
dead man's finger, to replace the other ring--a thing which he would
surely never have done--and to put that singular card beside his
victim. I say that this was obviously impossible.

"You may argue--but I have too much respect for your judgment, Watson,
to think that you will do so--that the ring may have been taken before
the man was killed. The fact that the candle had been lit only a short
time shows that there had been no lengthy interview. Was Douglas, from
what we hear of his fearless character, a man who would be likely to
give up his wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of
his giving it up at all? No, no, Watson, the assassin was alone with
the dead man for some time with the lamp lit. O