s guilt, and as the time slipped by and
brought the day of his doom nearer she grew desperate, and as a last
resource she came to me. It was a good thing she did so. For her story,
though apparently making the case against Penreath blacker still,
incidentally brought to light a clue which threw a new light on the case
and decided me to return to Flegne. That clue is contained in the
match-box."

CHAPTER XXV

Colwyn opened the silver and enamel box, and emptied the matches on the
table.

"I showed this match-box to Charles on my return to the inn, and he told
me that Penreath used it in the upstairs sitting-room the night he dined
there with Mr. Glenthorpe. Therefore, it is a reasonable deduction to
assume that he had no other matches in his possession the night of the
murder.

"This fact is highly significant, because the matches in Penreath's
silver box are, as you see, blue-headed wax matches, whereas the matches
struck in Mr. Glenthorpe's room on the night of the murder were of an
entirely different description--wooden matches with pink heads, of
British manufacture--so-called war matches, with cork pine sticks. The
sticks of these matches break rather easily unless they are held near
the head. Two broken fragments of this description of match, with
unlighted heads, were found in Mr. Glenthorpe's room the morning after
the murder. Superintendent Galloway picked up one by the foot of the
bed, and I picked up the other under the broken gas-globe. The recovery
of Penreath's match-box in the murdered man's room suggested several
things. In the first place, if he had no other matches in his possession
except those in his silver and enamel box, he was neither the murderer
nor the second person who visited the room that night. But if my
deduction about the matches was correct, how was it that his match-box
was found in the murdered man's room? The inference is that Penreath
left his match-box in the dining room after lighting his candle before
going to bed, and the murderer found it and took it into Mr.
Glenthorpe's bedroom to point suspicion towards Penreath.

"This fact opened up a new possibility about the crime--the possibility
that Penreath was the victim of a conspiracy. When we were examining the
footprints which led to the pit, the possibility of somebody else having
worn Penreath's boots occurred to me, because I have seen that trick
worked before, but the servant's story suggested that Penreath did not