uest is Mr. Vincent Musard, the explorer," replied Miss Heredith
coldly.

"The same man." Merrington made another minute note in his pocket-book,
and continued, "May I take it, then, that all your guests who were
staying here were assembled in the dining-room at the time the murder
was committed?"

"Yes; except one who left during the afternoon."

"Who was that?"

"Captain Nepcote, a friend of my nephew's. He received a telegram
recalling him to the front, and returned to London by the afternoon
train."

Merrington made a note of this in his pocket-book with an air of
finality, and asked Miss Heredith to see that the servants were sent to
the library one by one, to be questioned. Miss Heredith said she would
arrange it with the housekeeper, and was then politely escorted to the
door by Captain Stanhill.

The next few hours were educative for Captain Stanhill. Although he was
Chief Constable of Sussex, he took no part in the proceedings, but sat
at the table like a man in a dream, living in a world of Superintendent
Merrington's creation--a world of sinister imaginings and vile motives,
through which stealthy suspicion prowled craftily with padded feet,
seeking a victim among the procession of weeping maids, stolid
under-gardeners, stable hands, and anxious upper servants who presented
themselves in the library to be questioned. But it seemed to Captain
Stanhill that though the women were flustered and the men nervous, they
knew nothing whatever about the atrocious murder which had been
committed a few hours before in the room above their heads. Merrington
also seemed to be aware that he was getting no nearer the truth with his
traps, his questions, and his bullying, and he grew so angry and savage
as the day wore on that he reminded Captain Stanhill of a bull he had
once seen trying to rend a way through a mesh. As the morning advanced,
Merrington's face took on a deeper tint of purple, his fierce little
eyes grew more bloodshot, and between the intervals of examining the
servants he mopped his perspiring head with a large handkerchief.

The significance of one fact he did not realize until afterwards. The
last of the inmates of the moat-house to come to the library was the
housekeeper, Mrs. Rath, who presented herself at his request in order to
acquaint him with the details of the domestic management of the
household. Mrs. Rath entered the room with a nervous air. Her white face
contrasted oddly with her black