nderstood
that they could hear nothing, and that all that had happened was known
only to ourselves.

"It was at that instant that the idea came to me. I was fairly dazzled
by the brilliance of it. The man's sleeve had slipped up and there was
the branded mark of the lodge upon his forearm. See here!"

The man whom we had known as Douglas turned up his own coat and cuff to
show a brown triangle within a circle exactly like that which we had
seen upon the dead man.

"It was the sight of that which started me on it. I seemed to see it
all clear at a glance. There were his height and hair and figure, about
the same as my own. No one could swear to his face, poor devil! I
brought down this suit of clothes, and in a quarter of an hour Barker
and I had put my dressing gown on him and he lay as you found him. We
tied all his things into a bundle, and I weighted them with the only
weight I could find and put them through the window. The card he had
meant to lay upon my body was lying beside his own.

"My rings were put on his finger; but when it came to the wedding
ring," he held out his muscular hand, "you can see for yourselves that
I had struck the limit. I have not moved it since the day I was
married, and it would have taken a file to get it off. I don't know,
anyhow, that I should have cared to part with it; but if I had wanted
to I couldn't. So we just had to leave that detail to take care of
itself. On the other hand, I brought a bit of plaster down and put it
where I am wearing one myself at this instant. You slipped up there,
Mr. Holmes, clever as you are; for if you had chanced to take off that
plaster you would have found no cut underneath it.

"Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while and then
get away where I could be joined by my 'widow' we should have a chance
at last of living in peace for the rest of our lives. These devils
would give me no rest so long as I was above ground; but if they saw in
the papers that Baldwin had got his man, there would be an end of all
my troubles. I hadn't much time to make it all clear to Barker and to
my wife; but they understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all
about this hiding place, so did Ames; but it never entered his head to
connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to Barker
to do the rest.

"I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened the
window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how the