was taking my before-bedtime constitutional, having
set out from the hotel about a quarter past ten. I went along the field
path that runs behind White Gables, cutting off the great curve of the
road, and came out on the road nearly opposite that gate that is just by
the eighth hole on the golf-course. Then I turned in there, meaning to
walk along the turf to the edge of the cliff, and go back that way. I
had only gone a few steps when I heard the car coming, and then I heard
it stop near the gate. I saw Manderson at once. Do you remember my
telling you I had seen him once alive after our quarrel in front of the
hotel? Well, this was the time. You asked me if I had, and I did not
care to tell a falsehood.'

A slight groan came from Trent. He drank a little wine, and said
stonily, 'Go on, please.'

'It was, as you know,' pursued Mr Cupples, 'a moonlight night, but I was
in shadow under the trees by the stone wall, and anyhow they could not
suppose there was any one near them. I heard all that passed just
as Marlowe has narrated it to us, and I saw the car go off towards
Bishopsbridge. I did not see Manderson's face as it went, because his
back was to me, but he shook the back of his left hand at the car with
extraordinary violence, greatly to my amazement. Then I waited for him
to go back to White Gables, as I did not want to meet him again. But he
did not go. He opened the gate through which I had just passed, and he
stood there on the turf of the green, quite still. His head was bent,
his arms hung at his sides, and he looked some-how--rigid. For a few
moments he remained in this tense attitude, then all of a sudden his
right arm moved swiftly, and his hand was at the pocket of his overcoat.
I saw his face raised in the moonlight, the teeth bared, and the eyes
glittering, and all at once I knew that the man was not sane. Almost as
quickly as that flashed across my mind, something else flashed in the
moonlight. He held the pistol before him, pointing at his breast.

'Now I may say here I shall always be doubtful whether Manderson really
meant to kill himself then. Marlowe naturally thinks so, knowing nothing
of my intervention. But I think it quite likely he only meant to wound
himself, and to charge Marlowe with attempted murder and robbery.

'At that moment, however, I assumed it was suicide. Before I knew what I
was doing I had leapt out of the shadows and seized his arm. He shook
me off with a furious snarling no