the second door closely, noticed that the wood was
worm-eaten and shrunken. For that reason it fitted but loosely into the
aperture of the wall, and on the one side there was a wide crack which
arrested Colwyn's attention. It ran the whole length of the door, along
the top--that is, horizontally--and was, perhaps, a quarter of an inch
wide.

With the tightened nerves which presage an important discovery, Colwyn
felt for his pocket knife, opened the largest blade, and thrust it into
the crack. It penetrated up to the handle. He ran the knife along the
whole length of the crack without difficulty. There was no doubt it
opened into the next room.

Colwyn closed the trap-door carefully, and started to push the wardrobe
back into its previous position. As he did so, his eye fell upon several
tiny scraps of paper lying in the vacant space. He stooped, and picked
them up. They were the torn fragments of a pocket-book leaf, which had
been written upon. Colwyn endeavoured to place the fragments together
and read the writing. But some of the pieces were missing, and he could
only decipher two disjointed words--"Constance" and "forgive."

Slowly, almost mechanically, the detective felt for his pipe, lit it,
and stood for a long time at the open window, gazing with set eyes into
the brooding darkness, wrapped in profound thought, thinking of his
discoveries and what they portended.

CHAPTER XX

Colwyn was astir with the first glimmering of a grey dawn. He wanted to
test the police theory that the murder was committed by climbing from
one bedroom to the other, but he did not desire to be discovered in the
experiment by any of the inmates of the inn.

The window of his bedroom was so small that it was difficult to get
through, and there was a drop of more than eight feet from the ledge to
the hillside. After one or two attempts Colwyn got out feet foremost,
and when half way through wriggled his body round until he was able to
grasp the window-ledge and drop to the ground. The fall caused his heels
to sink deeply into the clay of the hillside, which was moist and sticky
after the rain.

Colwyn closely examined the impression his heels had made, and then
walked along until he stood underneath the window of the next room. It
was an easy matter to climb through this window, which was larger, and
closer to the ground--five feet from the hillside, at the most. Colwyn
sprang on to the ledge, and tried the window with his hand