rigin, and for
that reason suggested to Colwyn's mind that the bed had been moved by
somebody who wanted more room in front of the grate. For what purpose?
He turned his attention to the grate itself in the hope of obtaining an
answer to that question.

The grate was empty, and in the housewifely way a sheet of white paper
had been laid on the bottom bars to catch occasional flakes of soot from
the chimney. But there were no burnt papers or charred fragments to
suggest that the grate had recently been used. Dissatisfied and
perplexed, Colwyn was about to rise to his feet when it chanced that his
eyes, glancing into a corner, lighted on something tiny and metallic in
the crevice between the white paper and the side bars of the grate.
Wondering what it was, he succeeded in getting it out with his finger
and thumb. It was a percussion cap.

This discovery, strange as it was, seemed at first sight far enough
removed from the circumstances of the murder, except so far as it
brought the thought of lethal weapons to the imagination. But a weapon
which required a percussion cap for its discharge had nothing to do with
Violet Heredith's death. She had been killed by a bullet which fitted
Nepcote's revolver, which was a pinfire weapon. The medical evidence had
established that fact beyond the shadow of a doubt. Moreover, the
percussion cap was unexploded, which seemed to make its presence in the
grate even more difficult of explanation. It looked as though it had
been dropped accidentally, but how came it to be there at all? The
strangeness of the discovery was intensified by the knowledge that
percussion caps and muzzle-loading weapons had become antiquated with
the advent of the breech-loader. Who used such things nowadays?

By the prompting of that mysterious association of ideas which is called
memory, Colwyn was reminded of his earlier visit to the gun-room
downstairs, and Musard's statement about the famous pair of pistols in
the brass-bound mahogany box, which "carried as true as a rifle up to
fifty yards, but had a heavy recoil." They belonged to the period
between breech-loaders and the ancient flint-locks, and were probably
muzzle-loaders. With that sudden recollection, Colwyn also recalled that
Musard had been unable to show him the pistols because the key of the
case had been mislaid or lost.

This incident, insignificant as it had appeared at the time, seemed
hardly to gain in importance when considered in conjun