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I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before an alarm
of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it
amused me to make him reveal himself. Besides, I owed you a
little mystification, Lestrade, for your chaff in the morning."
"Well, sir, you certainly got equal with me on that. But how
in the world did you know that he was in the house at all?"
"The thumb-mark, Lestrade. You said it was final; and so it
was, in a very different sense. I knew it had not been there the
day before. I pay a good deal of attention to matters of detail, as
you may have observed, and I had examined the hall, and was
sure that the wall was clear. Therefore, it had been put on during
the night."
"But how?"
"Very simply. When those packets were sealed up, Jonas
Oldacre got McFarlane to secure one of the seals by putting his
thumb upon the soft wax. It would be done so quickly and so
naturally, that I daresay the young man himself has no recollec-
tion of it. Very likely it just so happened, and Oldacre had
himself no notion of the use he would put it to.


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