‘How else can we explain her frenzied anxiety that her second one should not enter it? The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities, or, shall we say, that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile. She fled from him at last, returned to England, changed her name, and started her life, as she thought, afresh. She had been married three years, and believed that her position was quite secure—having shown her husband the death certificate of some man whose name she had assumed—when suddenly her whereabouts was discovered by her first husband, or, we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who had attached herself to the invalid. They write to the wife and threaten to come and expose her. She asks for a hundred pounds and endeavours to buy them off. They come in spite of it, and when the husband mentions casually to the wife that there are new-comers in the cottage, she knows in some way that they are her pursuers. She waits until her husband is asleep, and then she rushes down to endeavour to persuade them to leave her in peace. Having no success, she goes again next morning, and her husband meets her, as he has told us, as she came out. She promises him then not to go there again, but two days afterwards, the hope of getting rid of those dreadful neighbours is too strong for her, and she makes another attempt, taking down with her the photograph which had probably been demanded from her. In the midst of this interview the maid rushes in to say that the master has come home, on which the wife, knowing that he would come straight down to the cottage, hurries the inmates out at the back door, into that grove of fir trees probably which was mentioned as standing near. In this way he finds the place deserted. I shall be very much surprised, however, if it is still so when he reconnoitres it this evening. What do you think of my theory?’

‘It is all surmise.’

‘But at least it covers all the facts. When new facts come to our knowledge which cannot be covered by it, it will be time enough to reconsider it. At present we can do nothing until we have a fresh message from our friend at Norbury.’

But we had not very long to wait. It came just as we had finished our tea. ‘The cottage is still tenanted,’ it said. ‘Have seen the face again at the window. I’ll meet the seven o’clock train, and take no steps until you arrive.’

He was waiting on the platform when we stepped out, and we could see in the light of the station lamps that he was very pale, and quivering with agitation.

‘They are still there, Mr Holmes,’ said he, laying his hand upon my friend’s sleeve. ‘I saw lights in the cottage as I came down. We shall settle it now, once and for all.’

‘What is your plan. then?’ asked Holmes, as we walked down the dark, tree-lined road.

‘I am going to force my way in and see for myself who is in the house. I wish you both to be there as witnesses.’

‘You are quite determined to do this, in spite of your wife’s warning that it is better that you should not solve the mystery?’

‘Yes, I am determined.’

‘Well, I think that you are in the right. Any truth is better than indefinite doubt. We had better go up once. Of course, legally, we are putting ourselves hopelessly in the wrong, but I think that it is worth it.’

It was a very dark night and a thin rain began to fall as we turned from the high-road into a narrow lane, deeply rutted, with edges on either side. Mr Grant Munro pushed impatiently forward, however, and we stumbled after him as best we could.