"
"I'll take your advice. But how did you know of this place,
Mr. Holmes?"
"I made up my mind that the fellow was in hiding in the house.
When I paced one corridor and found it six feet shorter than
the corresponding one below, it was pretty clear where he was.
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.
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