ray athwart the
upper portion of the house. But the windows of the retreating first story
still remained in shadow. Rolfe scrutinised these windows closely. There
were three of them--he knew that two of them opened out from the bedroom
the dead man used to occupy, and the third one belonged to the library
adjoining--the room where the murder had been committed. The moonlight,
gradually stealing over the house, revealed the windows of the bedroom
closed and the blinds down, but the library was still in shadow, for a
large chestnut-tree which grew in front of the house was directly in the
line of Rolfe's vision.

Rolfe remained watching the house for some time, but no sign or sound of
life could he detect in its silent desolation. "I must have been
mistaken," he muttered, with a final glance at the windows of the first
story. "There's nobody in the house."

He turned to go, and had taken a few steps through the pinewood when
suddenly he started and stood still. His quick ear had caught a faint
sound--a kind of rattle--coming from the direction of the house. What was
that noise which sounded so strangely familiar to his ears? He had it! It
was the fall of a Venetian blind. Instantaneously there came to Rolfe
the remembrance that Inspector Chippenfield had ordered the library blind
to be left up, so that when the sun was high in the heavens its rays,
striking in through the window over the top of the chestnut-tree, might
dry up the stain of blood on the floor, which washing had failed to
efface. Somebody was in the library and had dropped the blind.

Rolfe hurriedly retraced his steps to the edge of the plantation, and
raced across the Italian garden, feeling for his revolver as he ran. Some
instinct told him that he would find entrance through the French windows
on the west side of the morning room, and thither he directed his steps.
He pulled out his electric torch and tried the windows. They were shut,
and the first one was locked. The second one yielded to his hand. He
pulled it open, and stepped into the room. Making his way by the light of
his torch to the stairs, he swiftly but silently crept up them and turned
to the library on the left of the first landing. The door was closed but
not locked, and a faint light came through the keyhole. Rolfe pushed the
door open, and looked into the room. A man was leaning over the dead
judge's writing-desk, examining its contents by the light of a candle
which he had set down o