"I thought it would please you. But I have not finished yet. Dr. Barnicot went to his office at twelve o'clock. You can imagine his amazement when he arrived there and found that the window had been opened in the night. The broken pieces of his second plaster head of Napoleon were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to little pieces where it stood. In neither case were there any signs which could give us a clue about the criminal or madman who had done it. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got the facts."

"They are strange, in fact grotesque," said Holmes. "May I ask whether the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot's rooms were exact duplicates of the one which was destroyed in Morse Hudson's shop?"

"They were taken from the same mould." said Lestrade

"Such a fact must mean that it can't be that man who breaks them does it because he hates Napoleon. There must be hundreds of statues of the great Emperor in London. It is too much of a coincidence that our mad statue-smasher should just accidentally decide to begin with three specimens of the same statue."