roughly was lying, you get exactly six feet ten and five-eighths inches,
in both cases."

"An approximate perpendicular to roughly about these places gives this
exact measurement?" repeated Cromarty gravely. "Well, what next?"

"Well, sir, I'll not insist too much on the coincidence, but it seems to
me vera remarkable. But the two significant features of this case seem
to me yon table being upset over by the windie and the corp being found
over by the door."

"You're talking horse sense now," murmured Ned.

"Now, yon table was upset by Sir Reginald falling on it!"

Ned looked at him keenly.

"How do you know?"

"Because one of the legs was broken clean off!"

"What, when we saw it this morning?"

"We had none of us noticed it then, sir; but I've had a look at it
since, and there's one leg broken fair off at the top. The break was
half in the socket, as it were, leaving a kind of spike, and if you
stick that into the socket you can make the table look as good as new.
It's all right, in fac', until you try to move it, and then of course
the leg just drops out."

"And it wasn't like that yesterday?"

"I happened to move it myself not so long before Sir Reginald came into
the room, and that's how I know for certain where it was standing and
that it wasn't broken. And yon wee light tables dinna lose their legs
just with being cowped, supposing there was nothing else than that to
smash them. No, sir, it was poor Sir Reginald falling on top of it that
smashed yon leg."

"Then he was certainly struck down near the window!"

"Well, we'll see that in a minute. It's no in reason, Mr. Cromarty, to
suppose he deliberately opened the windie to let his ain murderer in.
And it's a' just stuff and nonsense to suggest Sir Reginald was sitting
on a winter's night--or next door to winter onyhow, with his windie wide
open. I'm too well acquaint with his habits to believe that for a
minute. And it's impossible the man can have opened a snibbed windie and
got in, with some one sitting in the room, and no alarm given. So it's
perfectly certain the man must have come in at the door. That's a fair
deduction, is it not, sir?"

Ned Cromarty frowned into space in silence. When he spoke it seemed to
be as much to himself as to Bisset.

"How did the window get unsnibbed? Everything beats me, but that beats
me fairly."

"Well, sir, Mr. Rattar may no be just exac'ly as intellectual as me and
you, but I think there's maybe somethi