d on the floor, and the hearth brush, the odds
seemed heavy on entry by the window. I also found that the middle blind
had been out of order that night and that it _might_ have been quite
possible for any one outside to have seen Sir Reginald sitting in the
room and known he was alone there. Again, it seemed long odds on his
having recognised the man outside and opened the window himself, which,
again, pointed to the man being some one he knew quite well and never
suspected mischief from."

"Those were always my own ideas, except that I felt bamboozled where you
felt clear--which shows the difference between our brains!"

Carrington laughed and shook his head.

"I wish I could think so! No, no, it's merely a case of every man to his
own trade. And as a matter of fact I was left just as bamboozled as you
were. For who could this mysterious man be? Of the people inside the
house, I had struck out Miss Farmond, Bisset, Lady Cromarty, and all the
female servants. Only Sir Malcolm was left. I wired for him to come up
and was able to score him out too. I also visited you and scored you
out. So there I was--with no conceivable criminal!"

"But you'd already begun to suspect Rattar, hadn't you?"

"I knew he had lied about engaging me; I discovered from Lady Cromarty
that he had told her of Sir Malcolm's engagement to Miss Farmond--and I
suspected he had started her suspicions of them; and I saw that he was
set on that theory, in spite of the fact that it was palpably improbable
if one actually knew the people. Of course if one didn't, it was
plausible enough. When I first came down here it seemed to me a very
likely theory and I was prepared to find a guilty couple, but when I met
Miss Farmond and told her suddenly that Sir Malcolm was arrested, and
she gazed blankly at me and asked 'What for?' well, I simply ran my
pencil, so to speak, through her name and there was an end of her! The
same with Sir Malcolm when I met him. And yet here was the family
lawyer, who knew them both perfectly, so convinced of their guilt that
he was obviously stifling investigation in any other direction. And on
top of all that, all my natural instincts and intuitions told me that
the man was a bad hat."

"But didn't all that make you suspect him?"

"Of what? Of leaving his respectable villa at the dead of night,
tramping several miles at his age in the dark, and deliberately
murdering his own best client and old friend under circumstances so