Page:Austin Freeman - The Mystery of 31 New Inn.djvu/180

 passage of the fifth or sixth bridge. "It's like a game of croquet. Go on. What is the next?"

I went on reading out the notes until I came to the final one:

"'Nine twenty-four. South-east. In covered way. Stop. Wooden gates closed.'"

Thorndyke ruled off the last line, remarking: "Then your covered way is on the south side of a street which bears north-east. So we complete our chart. Just look at your route, Jervis."

He held up the board with a quizzical smile and I stared in astonishment at the chart. The single line, which represented the route of the carriage, zigzagged in the most amazing manner, turning, re-turning and crossing itself repeatedly, evidently passing more than once down the same thoroughfares and terminating at a comparatively short distance from its commencement.

"Why!" I exclaimed, the "rascal must have lived quite near to Stillbury's house!"

Thorndyke measured with the dividers the distance between the starting and arriving points of the route and took it off from the scale.

"Five-eighths of a mile, roughly," he said. "You could have walked it in less than ten minutes. And now let us get out the ordnance map and see if we can give to each of those marvelously erratic lines 'a local habitation and a name.'"

He spread the map out on the table and placed our chart by its side.

"I think," said he, "you started from Lower Kennington Lane?"