thought it well to put you
in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if anything should
strike you--" White Mason looked doubtfully at the amateur.

"I have worked with Mr. Holmes before," said Inspector MacDonald. "He
plays the game."

"My own idea of the game, at any rate," said Holmes, with a smile. "I go
into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police. If
I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because they
have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to score at
their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the right to
work in my own way and give my results at my own time--complete rather
than in stages."

"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we
know," said White Mason cordially. "Come along, Dr. Watson, and when the
time comes we'll all hope for a place in your book."

We walked down the quaint village street with a row of pollarded elms
on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars,
weather-stained and lichen-blotched, bearing upon their summits a
shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of
Birlstone. A short walk along the winding drive with such sward and oaks
around it as one only sees in rural England, then a sudden turn, and the
long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay before
us, with an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it. As we
approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful broad
moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold, winter sunshine.

Three centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries of
births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings of fox
hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business should have
cast its shadow upon the venerable walls! And yet those strange, peaked
roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a fitting covering to grim and
terrible intrigue. As I looked at the deep-set windows and the long
sweep of the dull-coloured, water-lapped front, I felt that no more
fitting scene could be set for such a tragedy.

"That's the window," said White Mason, "that one on the immediate right
of the drawbridge. It's open just as it was found last night."

"It looks rather narrow for a man to pass."

"Well, it wasn't a fat man, anyhow. We don't need your deductions, Mr.
Holmes, to tell us that. But you or I could squeeze through all right."

Holm