able
admission that Sisily was at Flint House on the night of her father's
death. The point Charles had to decide was whether he should divulge the
additional information that he had seen her leave Flint House with
Thalassa on that night. As he covered the space which intervened between
him and Barrant waiting at the gate, he decided that the moment had come
to tell all he knew.

"I know now that it couldn't have been much after half-past eight," he
said in reply to Barrant's question.

"Did you see Miss Turold there?"

"I was coming to that. I was standing outside, considering what I would
say to my uncle, when the door opened and she and Thalassa came out."

"Did you not speak to them?"

"I went to do so, but they disappeared in the darkness of the moors before
I could reach them. I hastened after them, but I got off the road track
and wandered about the moors for nearly half an hour before I could find
my way back to Flint House."

"And found the door open and your uncle lying dead upstairs?"

"Yes."

"Why have you not come forward with this story before?"

"How could I expect any one to believe a story which sounds improbable in
my own ears? Even my father refused to believe it--then, or afterwards."

"Still, you might have cleared Miss Turold on the question of time. There
was the stopped clock, you know. You reached Flint House shortly after
half-past eight, and went upstairs thirty minutes later."

Charles Turold was subtle enough to see that this remark covered more than
a trap. It suggested that Barrant discredited the whole of his story. The
hood clock in the dead man's study had pointed to half-past nine on the
night he was killed. Thalassa's story, as it stood, proved that Sisily
must have left the house long before then. But Charles's story threw
suspicion back on to Sisily by suggesting that the police had been misled
about the time of the murder, which must have been committed at least half
an hour earlier than they assumed. Charles did not attempt to point out
this supposed flaw in the detective's reasoning. He confined himself to a
reply which was a strict statement of fact, so far as it went.

"Until I heard Thalassa's story to-day I had no idea of the time of my own
arrival at Flint House on that night," he said.

"The clock found lying on the floor upstairs was stopped at half-past
nine," remarked Barrant with a reflective air, as though turning over all
the facts in his mind. "Accordi