ise, giving me a terrific blow in the
chest, and presenting the revolver at my head. But I seized his wrists
before he could fire, and clung with all my strength--you remember how
bruised and scratched they were. I knew I was fighting for my own life
now, for murder was in his eyes. We struggled like two beasts, without
an articulate word, I holding his pistol-hand down and keeping a grip
on the other. I never dreamed that I had the strength for such an
encounter. Then, with a perfectly instinctive movement--I never knew I
meant to do it--I flung away his free hand and clutched like lightning
at the weapon, tearing it from his fingers. By a miracle it did not go
off. I darted back a few steps, he sprang at my throat like a wild cat,
and I fired blindly in his face. He would have been about a yard away,
I suppose. His knees gave way instantly, and he fell in a heap on the
turf.

'I flung the pistol down and bent over him. The heart's action ceased
under my hand. I knelt there staring, struck motionless; and I don't
know how long it was before I heard the noise of the car returning.

'Trent, all the time that Marlowe paced that green, with the moonlight
on his white and working face, I was within a few yards of him,
crouching in the shadow of the furze by the ninth tee. I dared not
show myself. I was thinking. My public quarrel with Manderson the same
morning was, I suspected, the talk of the hotel. I assure you that every
horrible possibility of the situation for me had rushed across my mind
the moment I saw Manderson fall. I became cunning. I knew what I must
do. I must get back to the hotel as fast as I could, get in somehow
unperceived, and play a part to save myself. I must never tell a word to
any one. Of course I was assuming that Marlowe would tell every one how
he had found the body. I knew he would suppose it was suicide; I thought
every one would suppose so.

'When Marlowe began at last to lift the body, I stole away down the wall
and got out into the road by the clubhouse, where he could not see me.
I felt perfectly cool and collected. I crossed the road, climbed the
fence, and ran across the meadow to pick up the field path I had come by
that runs to the hotel behind White Gables. I got back to the hotel very
much out of breath.'

'Out of breath,' repeated Trent mechanically, still staring at his
companion as if hypnotized.

'I had had a sharp run,' Mr Cupples reminded him. 'Well, approaching the
hotel