ver knew I
meant to do it--I flung away his free hand and clutched like lightning
at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers. By a miracle it did not go
off. I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat like a wild cat,
and I fired blindly in his face. He would have been about a yard away, I
suppose. His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on the
turf.

"I flung the pistol down, and bent over him. The heart's motion ceased
under my hand. I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don't
know how long it was before I heard the noise of the car returning.

"Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight
on his white and working face, I was within a few yards of him,
crouching in the shadow of the furze by the ninth tee. I dared not show
myself. I was thinking. My public quarrel with Manderson the same
morning was, I suspected, the talk of the hotel. I assure you that every
horrible possibility of the situation for me had rushed across my mind
the moment I saw Manderson fall. I became cunning. I knew what I must
do. I must get back to the hotel as fast as I could, get in somehow
unperceived, and play a part to save myself. I must never tell a word to
any one. Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell everyone how
he had found the body. I knew he would suppose it was suicide; I thought
everyone would suppose so.

"When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the wall
and got out into the road by the club-house, where he could not see me.
I felt perfectly cool and collected. I crossed the road, climbed the
fence, and ran across the meadow to pick up the field-path I had come
by, that runs to the hotel behind White Gables. I got back to the hotel
very much out of breath."

"Out of breath," repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his
companion as if hypnotized.

"I had had a sharp run," said Mr. Cupples. "Well, approaching the hotel
from the back I could see into the writing-room through the open window.
There was nobody in there, so I climbed over the sill, walked to the
bell and rang it, and then sat down to write a letter I had meant to
write the next day. I saw by the clock that it was a little past eleven.
When the waiter answered the bell I asked for a glass of milk and a
postage-stamp. Soon afterwards I went up to bed. But I could not sleep."

Mr. Cupples, having nothing more to say, ceased speaking. He looked in
mild surprise at Trent, wh