ow it from the
window, and mark the spot where it fell into the moat. He opened the
window, and looked out across the garden. The distance to the moat was
much farther than he had imagined; so great, indeed, that his own shot
at the water fell short by several feet. It was impossible that Miss
Heredith could have accomplished such a remarkable feat as to hurl a
revolver across the intervening space between the window and the moat.
No woman could throw so far and so straight.

This unforeseen obstacle rather disconcerted Caldew at first, but on
looking out of the window again it seemed to him, by the lay of the
house, that the window of Miss Heredith's bedroom was closer to the moat
than the window at which he was standing. As Miss Heredith had
transferred her bedroom to the other wing, he decided to go into the
room and see if he were right. He still clung to his new idea that the
revolver had been thrown into the moat, although his altered view that
it might have been thrown from Miss Heredith's window meant the
abandonment of his other assumption that the disposal of the revolver by
that means accounted for the open window in Mrs. Heredith's bedroom.
Caldew realized as he left the room that the question of the open window
still remained to be solved. What he did not realize was that he was
distorting the facts of the case in order to establish the possibility
of his own theory.

The door of the room which Miss Heredith had occupied was ajar. He
pushed it open and entered. There was within that deserted and desolate
air which a room so quickly takes on when the occupant has vacated it.
The heavier furniture and the bed remained to demonstrate the ugliness
of utility after the accessories and adjuncts of luxury had been carried
away.

The blind was down and the room in partial darkness. Caldew went to the
window, raised the blind, and looked out. The distance to the moat was
appreciably nearer, compared with the window of the room he had just
left, but the distance was still considerable.

As Caldew turned from the window, with the reluctant conviction that he
had been nursing an untenable theory, a last ray of sunshine shot
through the open window, causing the dust he had raised by his entrance
to quiver and gyrate like a host of mad bacilli dancing a jig. The shaft
of light, falling athwart the dismantled toilet-table, brought something
else into view--a tiny fragment of gold chain dangling from the polished
sati