irs and the length of the corridor! That disposes of
the incident of the door. Whoever unlocked it was not the murderer."

Merrington retraced his steps along the corridor. As he walked, his eyes
roved restlessly over the tapestry hangings and velvet curtains, and
took in the dark nooks and corners which abound in old English
country-houses.

"Plenty of places here where a man might hide," he muttered, in a
dissatisfied voice.

At the head of the front staircase he paused, and looked over the
balusters, as though calculating the distance to the hall beneath. Then
he descended the stairs.

It still wanted half an hour to breakfast time. There was no sign of
anybody stirring downstairs except a fresh-faced maidservant, who was
dusting the furniture in the great hall. She glanced nervously at the
groups of police officials, and then resumed her dusting. Merrington
strode across to her.

"What is your name, my dear?" he asked, in his great voice.

"Milly Saker, sir."

"Very well, Milly. I'll come and have a talk with you presently--just
our two selves."

The girl, far from looking delighted at this prospect, backed away with
a frightened face. Merrington strode on through the open front door, and
turned towards the left wing.

It was a crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic
flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour
still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond.
Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the
dining-room, which opened on to the terraced garden.

"That's Mrs. Heredith's window," he said, pointing up to it. "Her
bedroom is directly over the dining-room. If the murderer escaped by the
window he must have dropped on to this gravel path."

"It is a pretty stiff drop," said Captain Stanhill, measuring the
distance with his eye.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Merrington. "He'd let himself down eight
feet with extended arms, and that would leave a drop of only ten feet or
thereabouts--not much for an athletic man. But if he dropped he must
have left footprints."

"There are none. I have looked," said Caldew.

The information did not deter Merrington from examining the path anew.
He got down on his hands and knees to scrutinize the gravel and the
grass plot more thoroughly.

"Nothing doing here either," he said as he scrambled to his feet. "There
are neither footprints nor marks such as one would expect to find i