tol in my pocket, I had
staggered with the body across the moonlit road and through that door,
I left much of my apprehension behind me. With swift action and an
unbroken nerve I thought I ought to succeed.'

With a long sigh Marlowe threw himself into one of the deep chairs at
the fireside and passed his handkerchief over his damp forehead. Each of
his hearers, too, drew a deep breath, but not audibly.

'Everything else you know,' he said. He took a cigarette from a box
beside him and lighted it. Trent watched the very slight quiver of the
hand that held the match, and privately noted that his own was at the
moment not so steady.

'The shoes that betrayed me to you,' pursued Marlowe after a short
silence, 'were painful all the time I wore them, but I never dreamed
that they had given anywhere. I knew that no footstep of mine must
appear by any accident in the soft ground about the hut where I laid
the body, or between the hut and the house, so I took the shoes off and
crammed my feet into them as soon as I was inside the little door. I
left my own shoes, with my own jacket and overcoat, near the body, ready
to be resumed later. I made a clear footmark on the soft gravel outside
the French window, and several on the drugget round the carpet. The
stripping off of the outer clothing of the body, and the dressing of it
afterwards in the brown suit and shoes, and putting the things into the
pockets, was a horrible business; and getting the teeth out of the mouth
was worse. The head--but you don't want to hear about it. I didn't feel
it much at the time. I was wriggling my own head out of a noose, you
see. I wish I had thought of pulling down the cuffs, and had tied the
shoes more neatly. And putting the watch in the wrong pocket was a bad
mistake. It had all to be done so hurriedly.

'You were wrong, by the way, about the whisky. After one stiffish drink
I had no more; but I filled up a flask that was in the cupboard, and
pocketed it. I had a night of peculiar anxiety and effort in front of
me and I didn't know how I should stand it. I had to take some once or
twice during the drive. Speaking of that, you give rather a generous
allowance of time in your document for doing that run by night. You
say that to get to Southampton by half-past six in that car, under
the conditions, a man must, even if he drove like a demon, have left
Marlstone by twelve at latest. I had not got the body dressed in the
other suit, with tie and