Now,
you see how the affair begins to clear up. The other fellow is
probably an Italian also, and a member of the Mafia. He has
broken the rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon his track.
Probably the photograph we found in his pocket is the man him-
self, so that he may not knife the wrong person. He dogs the
fellow, he sees him enter a house, he waits outside for him, and
in the scuffle he receives his own death-wound. How is that, Mr.
Sherlock Holmes?"
Holmes clapped his hands approvingly.
"Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!" he cried. "But I didn't quite
follow your explanation of the destruction of the busts."
"The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head.
After all, that is nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It
is the murder that we are really investigating, and I tell you that I
am gathering all the threads into my hands."
"And the next stage?"
"Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian
Quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest
him on the charge of murder.
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