d anything to do with them. He would hope from this that if
Mrs. Manderson heard him, she would take no notice of the supposed
presence of her husband.

So, pursuing my hypothesis, I followed the unknown up to the bedroom,
and saw him setting about his work. And it was with a catch in my own
breath that I thought of the hideous shock with which he must have heard
the sound of all others he was dreading most: the drowsy voice from the
adjoining room.

What Mrs. Manderson actually said, she was unable to recollect at the
inquest. She thinks she asked her supposed husband whether he had had a
good run in the car. And now what does the unknown do? Here, I think, we
come to a supremely significant point. Not only does he--standing rigid
there, as I picture him, before the dressing-table, listening to the
sound of his own leaping heart--not only does he answer the lady in the
voice of Manderson; he volunteers an explanatory statement. He tells her
that he has, on a sudden inspiration, sent Marlowe in the car to
Southampton; that he has sent him to bring back some important
information from a man leaving for Paris by the steamboat that morning.
Why these details from a man who had long been uncommunicative to his
wife, and that upon a point scarcely likely to interest her? Why these
details _about Marlowe_?

Having taken my story so far, I now put forward the following definite
propositions: that between a time somewhere about ten, when the car
started, and a time somewhere about eleven, Manderson was shot--probably
at a considerable distance from the house, as no shot was heard; that
the body was brought back, left by the shed, and stripped of its outer
clothing, while the car was left in hiding somewhere at hand; that at
some time round about eleven o'clock a man who was not Manderson,
wearing Manderson's shoes, hat and jacket, entered the library by the
garden-window; that he had with him Manderson's black trousers,
waistcoat and motor-coat, the denture taken from Manderson's mouth, and
the weapon with which he had been murdered; that he concealed these,
rang the bell for the butler, and sat down at the telephone with his hat
on and his back to the door; that he was occupied with the telephone all
the time Martin was in the room; that on going up to the bedroom-floor
he quietly entered Marlowe's room and placed the revolver with which the
crime had been committed--Marlowe's revolver--in the case on the
mantel-piece from