had. I next
inquired about the umbrellas in the house. At first I was told there
were only two--a cumbrous, Robinson Crusoe sort of affair, kept in the
kitchen and used by the servant, and a smaller one, belonging to
Benson's daughter. I have examined both. The covering of the girl's
umbrella is complete. Ann's is rent in several places, but the covering
is blue, whereas the piece of umbrella covering we found adhering to Mr.
Glenthorpe's window is black. While I was questioning Ann she suddenly
remembered that there was another umbrella in that lumber-room upstairs.
We went upstairs to look for it, but we couldn't find it, though Ann
says she saw it there a day or two before the murder. I think we may
assume that Ronald took it."

"But Ronald was a stranger to the place. How would he know the umbrella
was in the lumber-room?" said Colwyn, who had followed Galloway's
narrative with close attention.

"The door of the lumber-room stands ajar. Ronald probably looked in from
curiosity, and saw the umbrella."

The easy assurance with which Superintendent Galloway dismissed or got
over difficulties which interfered with his own theory did not commend
itself to Colwyn, but he did not pursue the point further.

"Is the umbrella still missing?" he asked.

"Yes. It seems that even a murderer cannot be trusted to return an
umbrella." Superintendent Galloway laughed shortly at his grim joke and
walked away to supervise the preparations for the inquest.

The coroner presently arrived from Heathfield in a small runabout
motor-car which he drove himself, with a tall man sitting beside him,
and a short pursy young man in the back seat nursing a portable
typewriter and an attache case on his knees. Toiling in the rear, some
distance behind the car, was a figure on a bicycle, which subsequently
turned out to be the reporter of the Heathfield local paper, who had
come over with instructions from one of the London agencies to send a
twenty line report of the inquest for the London press. In peace times
"specials" would probably have been despatched from the metropolis to
"do a display story," and interview some of the persons concerned, but
the war had discounted by seventy-five per cent the value of murders as
newspaper "copy."

The coroner, a short, stout, commonplace little man, jumped out of the
car as soon as it stopped, and bustled into the inn with an air of fussy
official importance, leaving his companions to follow.

"Go