our I am!"

"You know all about it;" insisted Mitchington.

"Come, now, isn't it true that you're Flood, and that Folliot's Wraye,
the two men whose trick on him got Brake convicted years ago? Answer
that!"

Flood looked from one side to the other. He was leaning against his
tea-table, set in the middle of his tidy living room. From the hearth
his kettle sent out a pleasant singing that sounded strangely in
contrast with the grim situation.

"Yes, that's true," he said at last. "But in that affair I--I wasn't
the principal. I was only--only Wraye's agent, as it were: I wasn't
responsible. And when Mr. Brake came here, when I met him that
morning--"

He paused, still looking from one to another of his audience as if
entreating their belief.

"As sure as I'm a living man, gentlemen!" he suddenly burst out, "I'd no
willing hand in Mr. Brake's death! I'll tell you the exact truth; I'll
take my oath of it whenever you like. I'd have been thankful to tell,
many a time, but for--for Wraye. He wouldn't let me at first, and
afterwards it got complicated. It was this way. That morning--when Mr.
Brake was found dead--I had occasion to go up into that gallery under
the clerestory. I suddenly came on him face to face. He recognized me.
And--I'm telling you the solemn, absolute truth, gentlemen!--he'd no
sooner recognized me than he attacked me, seizing me by the arm. I
hadn't recognized him at first, I did when he laid hold of me. I tried
to shake him off, tried to quiet him; he struggled--I don't know what
he wanted to do--he began to cry out--it was a wonder he wasn't heard in
the church below, and he would have been only the organ was being played
rather loudly. And in the struggle he slipped--it was just by that open
doorway--and before I could do more than grasp at him, he shot through
the opening and fell! It was sheer, pure accident, gentlemen! Upon my
soul, I hadn't the least intention of harming him."

"And after that?" asked Mitchington, at the end of a brief silence.

"I saw Mr. Folliot--Wraye," continued Flood. "Just afterwards, that was.
I told him; he bade me keep silence until we saw how things went. Later
he forced me to be silent. What could I do? As things were, Wraye could
have disclaimed me--I shouldn't have had a chance. So I held my tongue."

"Now, then, Collishaw?" demanded Mitchington. "Give us the truth about
that. Whatever the other was, that was murder!"

Flood lifted his hand and wiped away th