been touched up to now," said Cecil Barker. "I'll answer
for that. You see it all exactly as I found it."

"When was that?" The sergeant had drawn out his notebook.

"It was just half-past eleven. I had not begun to undress, and I was
sitting by the fire in my bedroom when I heard the report. It was not
very loud--it seemed to be muffled. I rushed down--I don't suppose it
was thirty seconds before I was in the room."

"Was the door open?"

"Yes, it was open. Poor Douglas was lying as you see him. His bedroom
candle was burning on the table. It was I who lit the lamp some minutes
afterward."

"Did you see no one?"

"No. I heard Mrs. Douglas coming down the stair behind me, and I rushed
out to prevent her from seeing this dreadful sight. Mrs. Allen, the
housekeeper, came and took her away. Ames had arrived, and we ran back
into the room once more."

"But surely I have heard that the drawbridge is kept up all night."

"Yes, it was up until I lowered it."

"Then how could any murderer have got away? It is out of the question!
Mr. Douglas must have shot himself."

"That was our first idea. But see!" Barker drew aside the curtain, and
showed that the long, diamond-paned window was open to its full extent.
"And look at this!" He held the lamp down and illuminated a smudge of
blood like the mark of a boot-sole upon the wooden sill. "Someone has
stood there in getting out."

"You mean that someone waded across the moat?"

"Exactly!"

"Then if you were in the room within half a minute of the crime, he
must have been in the water at that very moment."

"I have not a doubt of it. I wish to heaven that I had rushed to the
window! But the curtain screened it, as you can see, and so it never
occurred to me. Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas, and I could not
let her enter the room. It would have been too horrible."

"Horrible enough!" said the doctor, looking at the shattered head and
the terrible marks which surrounded it. "I've never seen such injuries
since the Birlstone railway smash."

"But, I say," remarked the police sergeant, whose slow, bucolic common
sense was still pondering the open window. "It's all very well your
saying that a man escaped by wading this moat, but what I ask you is,
how did he ever get into the house at all if the bridge was up?"

"Ah, that's the question," said Barker.

"At what o'clock was it raised?"

"It was nearly six o'clock," said Ames, the butler.

"I've heard," said