hear anyone breathing. Then he tried some of
the other rooms and turned on his torch, but could see no one. He thought
that perhaps Sir Horace had fallen asleep in a chair in the library, and
he went there. He listened at the door but could hear no sound. Then he
turned on his torch and by its light he saw a dreadful sight. Sir Horace
was lying huddled up near the desk--dead--just dead, he thought, because
there were little bubbles of blood on his lips as if they had been blown
there when breathing his last. He didn't wait to see any more, but he
turned and ran out of the house.

"I didn't believe his story, though Miss Fanning did, but he stuck to it
and seemed so frightened that I thought there might be something in it
till he brought out that he'd lost his revolver somewhere. Then I
remembered the horrid threats he'd used against Sir Horace, and I was
convinced that he had committed the murder. But of course I dared not let
him think I suspected him, and I pretended to console him. But the
feeling that kept running through my head was that both of us would be
suspected of the murder.

"I told this to Birchill, and that frightened him still more. 'What are
we to do?' he kept saying. 'We shall both be hanged.' Then, after a
while, we recovered ourselves a bit and began to look at it from a more
common-sense point of view. Nobody knew about Birchill's visit to the
house except our two selves and the girl, and there was no reason why
anybody should suspect us as long as we kept that knowledge to ourselves.
Birchill's idea, after we'd talked this over, was that I should go
quietly home to bed, and pay a visit to Riversbrook on Friday as usual,
discover Sir Horace Fewbanks's body, and then tell the police. But I
didn't like to do that for two reasons. I didn't think that my nerves
would be in a fit state to tell the police how I found the body without
betraying to them that I knew something about it; and I couldn't bear to
think of Sir Horace's body lying neglected all alone in that empty house
till the following day--though I kept that reason to myself.

"It was the girl who hit on the idea of sending a letter to the police.
She said that it would be the best thing to do, because if they were
informed and went to the house and discovered the body it wouldn't be so
difficult for me to face them afterwards. I agreed to that, and so did
Birchill, who was very frightened in case I might give anything away, and
consented on