ce presently.

"Is that all?" he went on. They were nearing that part of the wood
where care must be exercised, and he wanted Bates to talk while in
the vein.

"No, not by a long way," burst out the keeper, seemingly unable to
contain any longer the deadly knowledge weighing on his conscience.
"Don't you try an' hold me to it, Farrow, or I'll swear black an' blue
I never said it; but I knew the ring of the shot that killed my poor
ol' guv'nor. It was fired from an express rifle, an' there's on'y one
of the sort in Roxton, so far as _I've_ ever seen. An' it is, or ought
to be, in Mr. Robert's sittin'-room at this very minute. There! Now
you've got it. Do as you like. Get Tomlinson to talk, or anybody else,
but keep me out of it--d'ye hear?"

"I hear," said Farrow, thrilling with the consciousness that when some
dandy detective arrived from the "Yard," he would receive an
eye-opener from a certain humble member of the Hertfordshire
constabulary. Not that he quite brought himself to believe Robert
Fenley his father's murderer. That was going rather far. That would,
indeed, be a monstrous assumption as matters stood. But as clues the
quarrel and the rifle were excellent, and Scotland Yard must recognize
them in that light.

Certainly, this _was_ an unusual case; most unusual. He was well aware
of the reputation attached to Robert Fenley, the banker's younger son,
who differed from his brother in every essential. Hilton was
steady-going, business-like, his father's secretary and right hand in
affairs, both in the bank and in matters affecting the estate. Robert,
almost unmanageable as a youth, had grown into an exceedingly rapid
young man about town. But Roxton folk feared Hilton and liked Robert;
and local gossip had deplored Robert's wildness, which might erect an
insurmountable barrier against an obviously suitable match between him
and Mr. Mortimer Fenley's ward, the rich and beautiful Sylvia Manning.

These things were vivid in the policeman's mind, and he was wondering
how the puzzle would explain itself in the long run, when an
exclamation from Bates brought his vagrom speculations sharply back to
the problem of the moment.

The keeper, of course, as Farrow had said, was making straight for the
one place in the Quarry Wood which commanded a clear view of the
entrance to the mansion. The two men were skirting the disused quarry,
now a rabbit warren, which gave the locality its name; they followed
the rising edg