? ? ? ? "Did William say anything to his mother before going out?"
? ? ? ? "She is very old and deaf, and we can get no information from her. The shock has made her half-witted, but I understand that she was never very bright. There is one very important circumstance, however. Look at this!"
? ? ? ? He took a small piece of torn paper from a notebook and spread it out upon his knee.
? ? ? ? "This was found between the finger and thumb of the dead man. It appears to be a fragment torn from a larger sheet. You will observe that the hour mentioned upon it is the very time at which the poor fellow met his fate. You see that his murderer might have torn the rest of the sheet from him or he might have taken this fragment from the murderer. It reads almost as though it were an appointment."
? ? ? ? Holmes took up the scrap of paper, a facsimile of which is here reproduced.
AT QUARTER TO TWELVE
LEARN WHAT
MAY
? ? ? ? "Presuming that it is an appointment," continued the inspector, "it is of course a conceivable theory that this William Kirwan, though he had the reputation of being an honest man, may have been in league with the thief.
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