answered, pathetically, her
face a picture of anguish.

I felt alarmed, and indeed greatly disappointed at her manner. Limiting
the crime to three persons, one of whom must have been upon the porch
roof a little before daybreak, I saw at once that suspicion must
inevitably fall upon either Miss Temple or her father. In the first
instance--McQuade's theory that Miss Temple herself committed the
gruesome deed seemed borne out by all the circumstances, but, if not,
there could be but one plausible explanation of her unwillingness to
speak: she must have seen the murderer upon the roof, and for that
reason rushed back into the house. In this event, however, she would
certainly have no desire to shield anyone but her father--and he, in
turn might have re-entered the hallway through the window before I had
thrown on my clothes and left my room after hearing the cry. He, also,
to cover up his crime, had he indeed committed it, might have rebolted
the window from within while I was examining the body of the murdered
man, as McQuade had suggested. I remembered now that Major Temple had
excluded everyone from the room but ourselves, and shut the door as soon
as the murder was discovered. To suppose that Miss Temple was the
guilty person was to me out of the question. Had she committed the
crime, her father would necessarily have been an accomplice, otherwise
he would not have bolted the window, and this seemed unbelievable to me.
Yet there was the print of the bloody hand, upon the window sill--small,
delicately formed, certainly not that of her father. My brain whirled. I
could apparently arrive at nothing tangible, nothing logical. There yet
remained the one possibility--the Chinaman, Li Min. His hands, small and
delicate, might possibly have made the telltale print upon the window
sill, but, in that event, why should Miss Temple hesitate to tell of it,
had she seen him. The only possible solution filled me with horror. I
could not for a moment believe it, yet it insisted upon forcing itself
upon my mind: that Miss Temple and Li Min were acting together; that her
father, too, was in the plot, as he must have been if he rebolted the
window. The thing was clearly impossible, yet if not explained in this
way, the Chinaman was clearly innocent, for I believed without question
that, had he entered the room and committed the murder, he could in no
possible way have bolted the window himself, from without, after leaving
it. I walked a