ame to me
that if Major Temple could in any way have caused or been cognizant of
the death of Robert Ashton from without the room--without entering
it--his first act after doing so would naturally have been to search for
the emerald in the hope of securing it before the police had been
summoned to take charge of the case. I regretted that I had not
examined the floor of the attic above, to determine whether any
carefully fitted trap door, or hidden chimney or other opening to the
interior of the room below existed. I also felt that it was imperative
that a careful examination of the walls, as well as of the ground
outside beneath the three windows, should be made without delay. It was
even possible, I conjectured, that a clever thief could have in some way
cut out one of the window panes, making an opening through which the
window might have been opened and subsequently rebolted, though just how
the glass could then have been replaced was a problem I was not prepared
to solve. There was no question, however, that Robert Ashton was dead,
and that whoever had inflicted that deadly wound upon his head, and made
away with the emerald Buddha, must have entered the room in some way. I
was not yet prepared to base any hypotheses upon the supernatural. As I
concluded these reflections, we entered the town by way of Sidwell
street and I stopped at the Half Moon and secured my luggage. We then
drove to the police headquarters and I explained the case hurriedly to
the Chief Constable, omitting all details except those pertaining
directly to Mr. Ashton's death. The Chief Constable sent one of his men
into an inner room, who returned in a moment with a small, keen-looking,
ferret-faced man of some forty-eight or fifty years of age, with gray
hair, sharp gray eyes and a smooth-shaven face. He introduced him to me
as Sergeant McQuade, of Scotland Yard, who it seemed, happened to be in
the city upon some counterfeiting case or other, and suggested that he
accompany me back to the house. We had driven in Major Temple's high
Irish cart, and, putting the man behind, I took the reins and with
Sergeant McQuade beside me, started back in the direction of The Oaks.
We had scarcely left the limits of the town behind us, when I noticed a
figure in blue plodding slowly along the muddy road ahead of us, in the
same direction as ourselves, and Jones, the groom upon the drag behind
me said, in a low voice as we drew alongside, that it was Li Min, Maj