at I
have to add in way of further excuse."

"I shall have to hear it first."

"Correy is a sport, an incorrigible one; it is his only weakness. He
bets like an Englishman--not for the money, for the sums he risks are
small, but for the love of it--the fun--the transient excitement It
might be"--here Sweetwater's words came slowly and with shamefaced
pauses--"that the shooting of that arrow--I believe I said something like
this before--was the result of a dare."

A halt took place in the quick tattoo which Mr. Gryce's fingers were
drumming out on the table-top. It was infinitesimal in length, but it
gave Sweetwater courage to add:

"Then, I hear that he wishes to marry a rich girl and shrinks from
proposing to her on account of his small salary."

"What has that got to do with it?"

"Nothing so far as I can see. I am only elaborating the meager report
lying there under your hand. But I recognize my folly. You ordered me
to dream, and I did so. Cannot we forget my unworthy vaporings and enter
upon the consideration of what may prove more profitable?"

Here he glanced down at the slip of paper he himself held--the slip which
Mr. Gryce had handed him with a single word written on it, and that word
a name.

"In a moment," was Mr. Gryce's answer. "First explain to me how, with the
facts all in mind, and your chart before your eyes, you reconciled
Correy's position on the side staircase two minutes after the shooting
with your theory of a quick escape to the court by means of the door back
of the tapestry? Haven't you hurried matters to get him so far in such a
short space of time?"

"Mr. Gryce, I have heard you say yourself that this question of time has
been, from the first, our greatest difficulty. Even with these three
means of escape in our minds, it is difficult to see how it was possible
for anyone to get from the gallery to the court in the minute or so
elapsing between the cry of the dying girl and the appearance at her side
of the man studying coins in the adjoining section."

"You are right. There was a delay somewhere, as we shall find later on.
But granting this delay, a man would have to move fast to go the full
length of the court from the Curator's room even in the time which this
small delay might afford him. But perhaps you cut this inextricable knot
by locating Correy somewhere else than where he placed himself at the
making of the chart."

"No, I cut it in another way. You remember my startin