officer's vociferous exclamation was in striking
contrast to the detective's quiet tones. "How do you make that out?"

"He couldn't have committed the murder. Mr. Glenthorpe was killed during
the storm, between eleven and half-past. Benson says he didn't enter the
room till nearly half-past eleven."

"If that's all you're going on----"

"It isn't." There was a trace of irritation in the detective's voice.
"But Benson's story fills in the gaps of my reconstruction in a
remarkable way--so completely, that he couldn't have invented it to save
his life, because he does not know all we know. In this extraordinarily
complicated case the times are everything. My original theory was right.
There were two persons in the room the night of the murder--three,
really, but Peggy doesn't affect the reconstruction one way or the
other. The murderer, who carried an umbrella to shield himself from the
rain, entered the room about twenty past eleven. He murdered Mr.
Glenthorpe, took the money, and escaped the same way he entered--by the
window. Benson entered by the door at half-past eleven, certainly not
later, and after standing at the bedside for two or three minutes,
rushed downstairs, as he related, leaving his candle burning at the
bedside. During his absence downstairs his daughter entered the room.
Benson returned for the candle and found it gone. Had he returned a
minute or two earlier he would have seen his daughter carrying it away,
because in her story to me she said she thought she heard somebody
creeping up the stairs as she left the room. I thought at the time that
she imagined this, but now I have very little doubt that it was her
father she heard, going upstairs again to get the candle. Finally,
Benson, after planning it with Charles, removed the body to the pit some
time after midnight."

"This is mere guess-work. Let us stick to facts. On Benson's own
confession he entered the room nefariously and removed the dead man's
body."

"Yes, but it was a dead body when he got there--just dead. Mr.
Glenthorpe was alive and well not ten minutes before."

"Oh, come, Mr. Colwyn, this is going too far," Galloway expostulated.
"Again, I say, let us have no guess-work."

"This is not guess-work. There can be no doubt that the murderer left
the room by the window just before Benson entered it by the door."

"How do you know that?" asked Galloway.

"_Because he was watching Benson from the window._"

Galloway looked startle