ause I didn't think I was
injuring anybody. I believed Mr. Penreath to be guilty. Now you tell me
he is innocent. If I had had any idea of that I would have told the
truth at once, even though you had hanged me for it."

CHAPTER XXVIII

"You're a nice scoundrel, Benson," said Superintendent Galloway, nodding
his head at the innkeeper with a kind of ferocious banter. "You're
really a first-class villain, upon my soul! But this precious story with
which you've tried to bamboozle us is not complete. Would it be putting
too much strain on your inventive faculties to ask you, while you are
about it, to give us your version of how the money which was stolen from
Mr. Glenthorpe came to be hidden in the pit in which you flung his
body?"

"But I didn't know the money was hidden in the pit," said the wretched
man, glancing uneasily at the pocket-book, which was still lying on the
table. "I never saw the money, though I've confessed to you that I would
have taken it if I had seen it. That's the truth, sir--every word I've
told you to-night is true! Charles will bear me out."

"I've no doubt he will. I'll have something to say to that scoundrel
later on. There's a pair of you. I've no doubt he caught you in the act
of carrying away the body of your victim, and that you bribed him to
keep silence. You planned together to let an innocent man go to the
gallows in order to save your own skin. Now, my man----"

"Wait a moment, Galloway."

It was Colwyn who spoke. The innkeeper's story had been to him like a
finger of light in a murky depth, revealing unseen and unimagined
abominations, but supplying him with those missing pieces of the puzzle
for which he had long and vainly searched. During the brief colloquy
between Galloway and the innkeeper his brain had been busy fitting
together the whole intricate design of knavery.

"I want to ask a question," he continued, in answer to the other's
glance of inquiry. "What time was it you went to Mr. Glenthorpe's
room--the first time I mean, Benson. Can you fix it definitely?"

"Yes, sir. I kept looking at my watch in my room, waiting for the time
to pass. It was twenty past eleven the last time I looked, and I left my
room about five minutes later."

"Was it raining then?"

"Yes, sir, but not so hard as previously, and it stopped altogether
before I entered the room, though the wind was blowing."

"That is as I thought. Benson's story is true, Galloway."

"What!" The police