"It's always the way with your biggest puzzles, sir: the way to find
them out is the simplest way--the way that's so easy that you never even
give it a thought if it occurs to you. Perhaps you remember that chap
in the story, sir, as wanted to keep a certain dockyment out of the way
of the foreign detectives--French police--over the water--secret police,
I think they call themselves; not that there's one of them who can hold
a candle to our fellows. Spies, perhaps, would be the better name for
them. Well, he knew that as soon as he was out, they'd search the place
from top to bottom. Well, what does he do? Hide it in the most secret
place he could think of? Not he; for places that he could think of as
being the safest, perhaps they might think of too. He was too foxy,
sir; and he just folds it up like a letter, sticks it in a dirty old
envelope, and pops it into the card-rack over the chimney-piece,--plain,
for all folk to see; and, as a matter of course, they never so much as
look at it. That's just been the case with the young squire here; he's
been stuck up in the card-rack over the chimney-piece, chock before my
eyes, and I've been shutting 'em up close so as not to see him, when
he's been as good as asking me to look. There, sir! I haven't patience
with myself; and I'm going to ask to be put on the sooperannuation list,
along with the pensioners as I call 'em. Mysterious disappearance! why,
it wasn't anything of the sort, sir. But here we are!"
The cab was checked as he spoke, and alighting before a great gloomy
looking building, the sergeant led the way up a flight of stone steps,
and into a hall, where a liveried porter saluted him with a nod.
"Here, bring us the book again, Tomkins," said the sergeant; and the
porter reached a large folio from a desk, and placed it before the
sergeant upon a side-table.
"Here you are, sir," said the sergeant, eagerly, as he turned back some
leaves, till he came to one which bore the date of Lionel's
disappearance. "Now, look here!"
He pointed to an entry in the accident register; for they were in the
entrance-hall of a large hospital.
"Look at that, sir," said the sergeant again; "and tell me what you
think of it."