t undoubtedly you have made out a case for the further
investigation of this crime. What do you think, Galloway?"

"The question, to my mind, is what Mr. Colwyn's discoveries really
represent," replied Galloway. "He has built up a very ingenious and
plausible reconstruction, but let us discard mere theory, and stick to
the facts. What do they amount to? Apart from Penreath's statement in
the gaol that he saw the body carried down stairs----"

"You can leave that out of the question," said the detective curtly. "My
reconstruction of the crime is independent of Penreath's testimony,
which is open to the objection that it should have been made before."

"Exactly what I was going to point out," rejoined Galloway bluntly.
"Well, then, let us examine the fresh facts. There are five as I see
them. The recovery of Penreath's match-box, the discovery of the door
between the two rooms, the wound on the innkeeper's forehead, the
additional key, and the finding of the pocket-book in the pit. Exclude
the idea of conspiracy, and the recovery of the match-box becomes an
additional point against Penreath, because it strikes me as guess work
to assume that he had no other matches in his possession except that
particular box and the loose one he found in his vest pocket. Smokers
frequently carry two or three boxes of matches. The discovery of the
hidden door is interesting, but has no direct bearing on the crime. The
wound on the innkeeper's head looks suspicious, but there is no proof
that it was caused by his knocking his head against the gas globe in the
murdered man's room on the night of the murder. As Mr. Colwyn himself
has pointed out, there is not much in Benson having a second key of
Glenthorpe's room. Many hotel-keepers and innkeepers keep duplicate keys
of bedrooms. The significance of this discovery is that Benson kept
silence about the existence of this key. Undoubtedly he should have told
us about it, but I am not prepared to accept, offhand, that his silence
was the silence of a guilty man. He may have kept silence regarding it
through a foolish fear of directing suspicion to himself. That theory
seems to me quite as probable as Mr. Colwyn's theory. There remains the
recovery of the money in the pit. In considering that point I find it
impossible to overlook that Penreath returned to the wood after making
his escape. That suggests, to my mind, that he hid the money in the pit
himself, and took the risk of returning in ord