At first Monty had tried to get out of it by saying it was the keys. Esdaile's is not a modern house; its keys are not of the Yale kind, of which you can carry a dozen in one pocket; each of them is anything from three to five inches long, and they weigh very few to the pound. In handing over the house to Monty, Philip had given him eight or ten of these; and so at first (Esdaile said) Rooke had wanted to say it was the keys.

"I don't mean the keys," Philip had replied. "I mean the pocket on the other side that you're nursing as if it had eggs in it. Why have you been standing sideways and behind people all this time? And why did you jump when I wanted to give you a dust-down this morning?"

Esdaile's face became animated as at last he warmed up to it all. He spoke almost vehemently.

"You see," he said, "I wasn't going to have any more damned nonsense. I had quite enough of that—hours of it—all this that I'm telling you took place just after tea. So I was as short as you please. Pity I spoke quite so soon, but I really thought Audrey'd gone. And the idiot hadn't even put the safety-catch on," he added with disgust.

There was no need to urge him now. He was as resolved to tell his story as before he had been reticent. The only unfortunate thing was that until Monty should return he had so little to tell.

"So when he saw the key story wouldn't do he fetched out this pretty little article," he continued, rapping with his knuckle on the writing-desk. "Just like a kid caught stealing apples he was. I asked him where he got it, and he said on the roof. Then he told me all about you fellows going up into the bathroom, and how he'd been the one to crawl along the gutter because he doesn't weigh as much as either of you."

"But which of 'em gave it to him—Chummy or the other man?" Hubbard asked.

"Well, I'm not so sure that either of them really 'gave' it to him," Esdaile replied. "He began to be a bit of a mule when I pressed him about that. And of course I asked Monty all this before I knew it was Chummy at all, and Monty doesn't know that yet, though I don't think he ever met Chummy. No, as far as I can make out, the pistol was lying on the roof, just out of Chummy's reach, and he kept pointing to it—moving his hand like this."

The gesture Esdaile made was the very gesture I had seen Mr. Harry Westbury make in the Saloon Bar earlier in the day.

"So he just picked it up and put it into his pocket?"

"Just that. Simple, isn't it?"

"And it's been fired?"

"As you see."

"Innocent young man. What did he do during the War?"

"Camouflage," Esdaile replied. "In Kensington Gardens there. Imitation haystacks and dummy O.P. trees and gunpit-screens and painting tanks and so on. Making anything look like what it isn't. Just what he would do."

"Does he know this thing's been fired?"

"That I can't tell you. Audrey came in then."

And that was the answer to all our further questions—Audrey had then come in. Esdaile had as a matter of fact now told us all that had taken place between himself and Monty Rooke. For further information we must wait until Monty's return.

You may imagine, however, that I had now quite a lot of food for thought. In the first place, Rooke had taken it upon himself to conceal a highly material fact from the police. Whether Esdaile yet shared this responsibility was at present debatable. Audrey Cunningham's interruption half-way through Monty's story rather obscured the moral aspect of this last. One does not set weighty machinery going for trifles, and for all we knew Monty, when he arrived, might have a complete explanation. In the meantime Esdaile was probably wise to hold his hand.

A pistol, however, had undoubtedly been fired, and, as a further examination of the barrel showed, probably recently. And, if you remember, there was that small round hole in the starred roof-glass of the studio that I had at first assumed to have been caused by the broken mulberry branch. A pistol-bullet might have made just such a hole.

Next I remembered how Esdaile had been occupied when Hubbard and I had followed him into the studio shortly after his return from the cellar. He had been so engrossed in poking about the broken glass and mats on the studio floor that he had seemed to notice little else. Had he been looking for the bullet that had made that hole in the roof? And why had he had the roof-blinds drawn, and broken out on Monty when he had wanted to put them back again? This last, I admit, set me all at sea again. The drawing of the blinds would certainly hide the bullet-hole in the pane from anybody inside the house, supposing he wished to hide it; but what about the police who had been on the roof itself at that very moment? The drawing of the blinds inside would hide nothing from them. Why seek to conceal from the rest of us something that if they cared to investigate they could hardly fail to see?

One more thing. If that pistol had been fired on the premises, somewhere there must be, not only a bullet, but a spent case also. I mentioned this, and Esdaile gave a slight start of recollection.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "Glad you mentioned that. I found the case in the garden. Here it is. I'd honestly forgotten all about it."

And, as he fetched it out of his waistcoat pocket and put it down by the side of the pistol, I as honestly believed he had.

"But there's no sign of the bullet?" I asked.

"I've looked high and low for it," Esdaile replied. "Low, I should say, because naturally I don't want to go hunting about the roof in the daylight. Too many eyes about. There's no trace of it."

"But it wouldn't be on the roof if it made that hole in the glass. It would be in the studio. Or possibly," I ventured, "in the cellar."

But, as Esdaile was about to reply, a bell trilled in the kitchen, and, with a "That's Rooke, I expect," Esdaile put the pistol and the empty case back into the drawer, motioned us to remain where we were, and went out.

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