bed."

"But--but--are you _sure_ there is no mistake?"

"No, Miss Lorne, there is no mistake. It was the General who did the
drugging. I found the paper in which the sleeping draught had come from
the chemist's in the waste basket in the library; and when I wanted to
clench the belief and make it absolutely positive, I tricked the General
into confessing that he stood in need of a stimulant after the stress of
the night, then invited him to join me in one from the decanters in the
dining-room. He knew what was in that liqueur and--he declined. I knew
then that there was no mistake about his being the hand that had done
the drugging, just as I had known previously that he was the man Lady
Clavering had met at the wall door.

"When I rushed past you that time and raced through these grounds, I had
no more idea than a child unborn who the man I was pursuing would prove
to be. He might have been Harry Raynor; he might have been Lord St.
Ulmer. I even said to myself that he might be any male member of this
household from the General down; and my one idea was to get to the house
and to find which man was missing. I found no one absent! St. Ulmer was
in his bedroom; Harry Raynor was sleeping over the table in the
dining-room; and as I came clattering down the stairs the General
stepped out of the library to inquire into the cause of the
disturbance. To all intents and purposes he had been in there reading
the whole evening long. But it was a significant fact that as he opened
the door and came out, I was able to see past him into the room and to
discern that the curtains drawn over the swinging window were bellying
inward, showing that the opening of the door had started a current of
air which could be created only by the window behind them being likewise
open.

"That gave me the first suspicion of a clue. I looked at the man himself
for further evidence to back it up and, in the first glance, found it.
There was black soil on the toes of his house shoes and a smudge of
green wall-moss on his shirt cuff! I knew then just what he had done,
and how I had failed to overhaul him in that hot race. He had simply
ducked down out of sight, lain still in the bushes and allowed me to run
past him. For me there was, of course, no other means of entering the
house but by the door; for him there was the library window! He waited
to give me time to get into the house, then rose, ran across the
intervening space and back into the librar