trate looked at her sternly.

"Miss Temple," he said, "evidence has been given here this morning which
points strongly toward a prisoner in this court as the person guilty of
Mr. Ashton's death. Your answer to my question may confirm or disprove
his guilt. I direct you to answer my question at once. Whom did you see
upon the porch roof?"

Miss Temple looked despairingly about her, rose with a ghastly look from
her chair, and, facing the magistrate said: "It--it--oh, my God!--it was
my father!" Then she collapsed limply against the rail.

Major Temple rose from his seat and stood white and trembling. "Muriel!"
he cried, in a voice filled with incredulous amazement and horror,
which rang throughout the whole room.

I sprang forward with outstretched arms, but Inspector Burns was before
me. He placed Miss Temple tenderly in her chair: she was unconscious.

CHAPTER XI

THE VENGEANCE OF BUDDHA

When Miss Temple launched her terrible and unwilling accusation against
her father, and was carried unconscious from the room, I realized that I
was, to all intents and purposes, a free man. Whatever the
circumstantial evidence which had been so cleverly brought against me by
the Scotland Yard men, I knew that it could have no weight against
actual testimony to the effect that it was Major Temple, and not myself,
who had, early that morning, crept out upon the roof of the porch and
entered Ashton's room by way of his window. Miss Temple, it is true, had
testified that the window was closed, but she could not know whether or
not it was bolted, or whether Ashton had opened it later, before
retiring, to secure fresh air in his room during the night. To me it
seemed probable that he had. How to account for its subsequent rebolting
from the inside I could not imagine, unless Major Temple had done it,
unknown to me, when we first entered the room on the morning of the
tragedy. I looked to see all these matters cleared up when he was placed
upon the stand, and I was not surprised to see one of the officers in
the court approach the figure sitting bowed and silent among the buzzing
spectators and, laying a hand upon his shoulder, bend down and whisper a
few low words into his unheeding ear. That Major Temple's arrest must
inevitably follow his daughter's testimony was apparent to everyone. He
arose and was about to accompany the officer to the dock, when there was
a murmur of voices about the door, and I saw Sergeant McQuade en