It certainly was uncommonly
hard, he thought, as he paced the cricket field after leaving Sergeant
Collard, to detect anybody, unless you knew who had really done the
crime. As he brooded over the case in hand, his sympathy for Dr.
Watson increased with every minute, and he began to feel a certain
resentment against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was all very well for
Sir Arthur to be so shrewd and infallible about tracing a mystery to
its source, but he knew perfectly well who had done the thing before
he started!
Now that he began really to look into this matter of the alarm bell
and the painting of Sammy, the conviction was creeping over him that
the problem was more difficult than a casual observer might imagine.
He had got as far as finding that his quarry of the previous night was
a boy in Mr. Outwood's house, but how was he to get any farther? That
was the thing. There were, of course, only a limited number of boys in
Mr. Outwood's house as tall as the one he had pursued; but even if
there had been only one other, it would have complicated matters. If
you go to a boy and say, "Either you or Jones were out of your house
last night at twelve o'clock," the boy does not reply, "Sir, I cannot
tell a lie--I was out of my house last night at twelve o'clock." He
simply assumes the animated expression of a stuffed fish, and leaves
the next move to you.
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