t shoot his father."

Her voice, though singularly musical, had a tearful ring which became
almost hysterical in the vehemence of the question and its disclaimer.

Fenley moved uneasily, and raised his right hand to his eyes, while
the left grasped the back of a chair.

"Bob is my brother Robert, who is away from home at this moment," he
said, and his tone deprecated the mere allusion to the rifle owned by
the absentee. "I only mentioned Miss Manning's words to show how
completely at a loss we all were to account for my father's wound. I
helped Tomlinson and Brodie to carry him to the settee in the hall.
Then we--Tomlinson, that is--opened his waistcoat and shirt. Tomlinson
cut the shirt with a scissors, and we saw the wound. Dr. Stern says
there are indications that an expanding bullet was used, so the
injuries must have been something appalling.... Sylvia, don't you
think----"

"I'll not faint, or make a scene, if that is what you are afraid of,
Hilton," said the girl bravely.

"That is all, then, or nearly all," went on Fenley, in the same
dreary, monotonous voice. "I telephoned to Dr. Stern, and to Scotland
Yard, deeming it better to communicate with you than with the local
police. But it seems that Bates, our head keeper hurrying to
investigate the cause of the shot, met some artist coming away from
the other side of the wood. The Roxton police constable too, met and
spoke with the same man, who told both Bates and the policeman that he
heard the shot fired. The policeman, Farrow, refused to arrest the
artist, and is now searching the wood with a number of our men----"

"Can't they be stopped?" broke in Furneaux, speaking for the first
time.

"Yes, of course," and Hilton Fenley became a trifle more animated. "I
wanted Farrow to wait till you came, but he insisted--said the
murderer might be hiding there."

"When did Farrow arrive?"

"Oh, more than half an hour after my father was shot. I forgot to
mention that my mother knows nothing of the tragedy yet. That is why
we did not carry my poor father's body upstairs. She might overhear
the shuffling of feet, and ask the cause."

"One thing more, Mr. Fenley," said Winter, seeing that the other had
made an end. "Have you the remotest reason to believe that any person
harbored a grievance against your father such as might lead to the
commission of a crime of this nature?"

"I've been torturing my mind with that problem since I realized that
my father was de