"And found nothing?"
"It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for
five or ten minutes."
"How do you know that?"
"Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar."
Holmes was delighted with this observation and congratulated Mortimer
warmly, but declared that he was frustrated at not having been there
himself to see the marks on the gravel before they were smudged by the
rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. I was surprised
that Mortimer still risked Holmes's impatience by suggesting that there
possibly remained something supernatural in the events, a realm in which
the most acute & most experienced of detectives would be helpless.
He referred to several sightings, before the terrible event, of
