It was after dinner that night, as he sat in the little drawing-room of the cottage with Lady Ruth and Sir Arthur, that his hostess asked him to explain to them how he had contrived to detect the way in which the murder had been committed.

"You promised to tell me all about it," Lady Ruth reminded him, "if I would keep silent about your finding the papers in the statue."

"Tell us the whole thing from the beginning," Sir Arthur urged him.

"I will willingly tell you anything that may interest you," Gimblet consented readily. "Every one enjoys talking about their work to sympathetic listeners such as yourselves. It is a bad thing to start on a case with a preconceived idea, and I can't deny that when I first came here I was very near having an idée fixe as to the origin of the crime. I tried to deceive myself into thinking that I kept an open mind on the subject; but I don't think I ever really doubted for a minute that the Nihilist society to which Lord Ashiel had formerly belonged was responsible for the murder. Even after my conversation with the new peer, which showed me that things looked blacker against Sir David Southern than I had expected, I was far from convinced that he was guilty, though I was obliged to admit that there was some ground for the conclusion come to by the police.