“Hang it,” he said, thoughtfully stropping his razor, “a thing with an end must have a start, and if I don’t get the start how am I to get the end?”

As the mirror did not answer this question, Mr. Gorby lathered his face, and started shaving in a somewhat mechanical fashion, for his thoughts were with the case, and ran on in this manner:—­

“Here’s a man—­well, say a gentleman—­who gets drunk, and, therefore, don’t know what he’s up to.  Another gent who is on the square comes up and sings out for a cab for him—­first he says he don’t know him, and then he shows plainly he does—­he walks away in a temper, changes his mind, comes back and gets into the cab, after telling the cabby to drive down to St. Kilda.  Then he polishes the drunk one off with chloroform, gets out of the cab, jumps into another, and after getting out at Powlett Street, vanishes—­that’s the riddle I’ve got to find out, and I don’t think the Sphinx ever had a harder one.  There are three things to be discovered—­First, who is the dead man?  Second, what was he killed for?  And third, who did it?

“Once I get hold of the first the other two won’t be very hard to find out, for one can tell pretty well from a man’s life whether it’s to anyone’s interest that he should be got off the books.  The man that murdered that chap must have had some strong motive, and I must find out what that motive was.  Love?  No, it wasn’t that—­men in love don’t go to such lengths in real life—­they do in novels and plays, but I’ve never seen it occurring in my experience.  Robbery?  No, there was plenty of money in his pocket.  Revenge?  Now, really it might be that—­it’s a kind of thing that carries most people further than they want to go.  There was no violence used, for his clothes, weren’t torn, so he must have been taken sudden, and before he knew what the other chap was up to.  By the way, I don’t think I examined his clothes sufficiently, there might be something about them to give a clue; at any rate it’s worth looking after, so I’ll start with his clothes.”

So Mr. Gorby, having dressed and breakfasted, walked quickly to the police station, where he asked for the clothes of the deceased to be shown to him.  When he received them he retired into a corner, and commenced an exhaustive examination of them.

There was nothing remarkable about the coat.  It was merely a well-cut and well-made dress coat; so with a grunt of dissatisfaction Mr. Gorby threw it aside, and picked up the waistcoat.  Here he found something to interest him, in the shape of a pocket made on the left-hand side and on the inside, of the garment.