“There’s only one thing I can’t make out, why didn’t he destroy it at once when he got hold of it?”

“Because he did not dare take the biggest risk of all—that of keeping it on his own person.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look at it from his point of view. I have discovered that there were only five short minutes in which he could have taken it—the five minutes immediately before our own arrival on the scene, for before that time Annie was brushing the stairs, and would have seen anyone who passed

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