“Excuse me,” said he, turning to Colonel Ross, who had looked at him in some surprise. “I was daydreaming.” There was a gleam in his eyes and a suppressed excitement in his manner which convinced me, used as I was to his ways, that his hand was upon a clue, though I could not imagine where he had found it.
“Perhaps you would prefer at once to go on to the scene of the crime, Mr. Holmes?” said Gregory.
“I think that I should prefer to stay here a little and go into one or two questions of detail. Straker was brought back here, I presume?”
“Yes; he lies upstairs. The inquest is tomorrow.”
“He has been in your service some years, Colonel Ross?”
“I have always found him an excellent servant.”
“I presume that you made an inventory of what he had in his pockets at the time of his death, Inspector?”
“I have the things themselves in the sitting-room, if you would care to see them.”
“I should be very glad.” We all filed into the front room and sat round the central table while the Inspector unlocked a square tin box and laid a small heap of things before us. There was a box of vestas, two inches of tallow candle, an A.D.P. brier-root pipe, a pouch of sealskin with half an ounce of long-cut Cavendish, a silver watch with a gold chain, five sovereigns in gold, an aluminum pencil-case, a few papers, and an ivory-handled knife with a very delicate, inflexible blade marked Weiss & Co. , London.