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of his way to bring with him the most noisy weapon he could select, knowing well that it will fetch every human being in the house to the spot as quick as they can run, and that it is all odds that he will be seen before he can get across the moat? Is that credible, Mr. Holmes?โ€

โ€œWell, you put the case strongly,โ€ my friend replied thoughtfully. โ€œIt certainly needs a good deal of justification. May I ask, Mr. White Mason, whether you examined the farther side of the moat at once to see if there were any signs of the man having climbed out from the water?โ€

โ€œThere were no signs, Mr. Holmes. But it is a stone ledge, and one could hardly expect them.โ€

โ€œNo tracks or marks?โ€

โ€œNone.โ€

โ€œHa! Would there be any objection, Mr. White Mason, to our going down to the house at once? There may possibly be some small point which might be suggestive.โ€

โ€œI was going to propose it, Mr. Holmes; but I thought it well to put you in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if anything should strike youโ€”โ€ White Mason looked doubtfully at the amateur.

โ€œI have worked with Mr. Holmes before,โ€ said Inspector MacDonald. โ€œHe plays the game.โ€

โ€œMy own idea of the game, at any rate,โ€ said Holmes, with a smile. โ€œI go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work of the police. If I have ever separated myself from the official force, it is because they have first separated themselves from me. I have no wish ever to score at their expense. At the same time, Mr. White Mason, I claim the right to work in my own way and give my results at my own timeโ€”complete rather than in stages.โ€

โ€œI am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we know,โ€ said White Mason cordially. โ€œCome along, Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we'll all hope for a place in your book.โ€

We walked down the quaint village street with a row of pollarded elms on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient stone pillars, weather-stained and lichen-blotched, bearing upon their summits a shapeless something which had once been the rampant lion of Capus of Birlstone. A short walk along the winding drive with such sward and oaks around it as one only sees in rural England, then a sudden turn, and the long, low Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay before us, with an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it. As we approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful broad moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold, winter sunshine.

Three centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries of births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings of fox hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business should have cast its shadow upon the venerable walls! And yet those strange, peaked roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a fitting covering to grim and terrible intrigue. As I looked at the deep-set windows and the long sweep of the dull-coloured, water-lapped front, I felt that no more fitting scene could be set for such a tragedy.

โ€œThat's the window,โ€ said White Mason, โ€œthat one on the immediate right of the drawbridge. It's open just as it was found last night.โ€

โ€œIt looks rather narrow for a man to pass.โ€

โ€œWell, it wasn't a fat man, anyhow. We don't need your deductions, Mr. Holmes, to tell us that. But you or I could squeeze through all right.โ€

Holmes walked to the edge of the moat and looked across. Then he examined the stone ledge and the grass border beyond it.

โ€œI've had a good look, Mr. Holmes,โ€ said White Mason. โ€œThere is nothing there, no sign that anyone has landedโ€”but why should he leave any sign?โ€

โ€œExactly. Why should he? Is the water always turbid?โ€

โ€œGenerally about this colour. The stream brings down the clay.โ€

โ€œHow deep is it?โ€

โ€œAbout two feet at each side and three in the middle.โ€

โ€œSo we can put aside all idea of the man having been drowned in crossing.โ€

โ€œNo, a child could not be drowned in it.โ€

We walked across the drawbridge, and were admitted by a quaint, gnarled, dried-up person, who was the butler, Ames. The poor old fellow was white and quivering from the shock. The village sergeant, a tall, formal, melancholy man, still held his vigil in the room of Fate. The doctor had departed.

โ€œAnything fresh, Sergeant Wilson?โ€ asked White Mason.

โ€œNo, sir.โ€

โ€œThen you can go home. You've had enough. We can send for you if we want you. The butler had better wait outside. Tell him to warn Mr. Cecil Barker, Mrs. Douglas, and the housekeeper that we may want a word with them presently. Now, gentlemen, perhaps you will allow me to give you the views I have formed first, and then you will be able to arrive at your own.โ€

He impressed me, this country specialist. He had a solid grip of fact and a cool, clear, common-sense brain, which should take him some way in his profession. Holmes listened to him intently, with no sign of that impatience which the official exponent too often produced.

โ€œIs it suicide, or is it murderโ€”that's our first question, gentlemen, is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe that this man began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing it; that he then came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud into a corner behind the curtain in order to give the idea someone had waited for him, opened the window, put blood on theโ€”โ€

โ€œWe can surely dismiss that,โ€ said MacDonald.

โ€œSo I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has been done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done by someone outside or inside the house.โ€

โ€œWell, let's hear the argument.โ€

โ€œThere are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or the other it must be. We will suppose first that some person or persons inside the house did the crime. They got this man down here at a time when everything was still and yet no one was asleep. They then did the deed with the queerest and noisiest weapon in the world so as to tell everyone what had happenedโ€”a weapon that was never seen in the house before. That does not seem a very likely start, does it?โ€

โ€œNo, it does not.โ€

โ€œWell, then, everyone is agreed that after the alarm was given only a minute at the most had passed before the whole householdโ€”not Mr. Cecil Barker alone, though he claims to have been the first, but Ames and all of them were on the spot. Do you tell me that in that time the guilty person managed to make footmarks in the corner, open the window,

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