r. Weatherley went on. "It really seems
quite amazing that that one blow right on the head should have done
it. He lay there quite still afterwards and it made me sick to look
at him. All the time, though, I kept on telling myself that if I had
not been there he would have hurt Fenella. That kept me quite cool.
Afterwards, I put the club carefully back in the case, pushed him a
little under the sofa, and then I stopped to think for a moment. I
was quite clever, Chetwode. The window was open through which the
man had come, so I locked the door on the inside, stepped out of the
window, came in at the front door with my latchkey, crept upstairs,
undressed quickly and got into bed. The funny part of it all was,
Chetwode," he concluded, "that nobody ever really found the body."

"You don't suppose that you could have dreamed it all, do you?"
Arnold asked.

Mr. Weatherley laughed contemptuously.

"What an absurd idea!" he exclaimed. "What a perfectly absurd idea!
Besides, although it did disappear, they came up and told me that
there was a man lying in the boudoir. You understand now how it all
happened," he went on. "It seemed to me quite natural at the time.
Still, when the morning came I realized that I had killed a man.
It's a horrid thing to kill a man, Chetwode!"

"Of course it is, sir," Arnold said, sympathetically. "Still, I
don't see what else you could have done."

Mr. Weatherley beamed.

"I am glad to hear you say that, Chetwode," he declared, "very glad.
Still, I didn't want to go to prison, you know, so a few days
afterwards I went away. I meant to hide for quite a long time. I--I
don't know what I'm doing back here."

He looked around the office like a trapped animal.

"I didn't mean to come back yet, Chetwode!" he exclaimed. "Don't
leave me! Do you hear? Don't leave me!"

"Only for one second, sir," Arnold replied, taking an invoice from
the desk. "They are wanting this in the warehouse."

Arnold stepped rapidly across to Mr. Jarvis's desk.

"Telephone home for his wife to come and bring a doctor," he
ordered. "Quick!"

"He's out of his mind!" Jarvis gasped.

"Stark mad," Arnold agreed.

When he re-entered the office, Mr. Weatherley was sitting muttering
to himself. Arnold came over and sat opposite to him.

"Mrs. Weatherley is calling round presently, sir," he announced.
"You'll be glad to see her again."

Mr. Weatherley went deadly pale.

"Does she know?" he moaned.

"She knows that s