Philip had described Rooke quite well when he had said that he had the air of a naughty boy caught robbing an orchard. He had a hang-dog yet defiant look as he entered, shepherded in by Philip as if we had been a tribunal empaneled for his condemnation. But there was relief in his face too—the relief of one who has got the worst over and hardly fears the rest. And, as he threw his hat on the table and looked round in search of a chair, he unconsciously emphasized his air of boyish guilt by sitting down on a low stool that stood between the empty fireplace and the escritoire.

Esdaile began immediately, as if Rooke had merely been out of the room for a few moments.

"Well, to continue our chat, Monty," he said. "I've told these fellows as much as you've told me. Shall we have the rest of it now?"

From the look on Monty's face I began to think that we might have some difficulty in getting very much more out of him, for the simple reason that, in picking up and concealing an incriminating pistol, he evidently didn't see that he had done anything at all out of the way. He seemed to think that was a natural thing to have done. I gathered also that there was something further on his mind, something that had already begun to dawn on my own and has doubtless occurred to you also. But we will come to that presently.

So Monty merely repeated what we already knew, and then looked from one to another of us as if to ask, "Now were we satisfied?"

"Oh, we want to know a good deal more than that," Esdaile continued. "First of all, did he speak? The man who pointed to the pistol, I mean."

"No. He'd taken too bad a toss for that," Monty replied. "He just pointed, the way I showed you, and I thought perhaps he didn't want the thing lying about, so I—well, I obliged him, so to speak."

"But it's been fired."

"I don't know anything about that. I didn't fire it, if that's what you mean."

"It's been fired recently. Did you notice if it was warm?"

"No, I didn't," said Monty, ruffling up, "and it's all very well you fellows talking, sitting down here with glasses of whisky in front of you, but I'll bet if you'd been in my place you'd have done exactly the same."

Here I struck in. I asked him what made him so sure of that. He turned his earnest brown eyes to me.

"I mean you just would. If you'd seen him, I mean—seen his face. It was the look in his eyes; I couldn't get it out of my mind for hours; I can see it now. I tell you you missed a pretty rotten job by not having to go up there, and here you go asking me if pistols were warm and who fired them and all about it as if I'd been having a fortnight's holiday up there."

I saw Monty's point. I suppose I have arrived at that stage of life when I too trust my eyes more and more as time goes on. Men may have all sorts of reasons for saying one thing and meaning another, but he is a remarkable man who can control his looks with the same facility. I have seen many eyes telling the truth while the lips beneath them have told the practiced lie. So if Monty had taken his impulse from Chummy Smith's anguished eyes in that moment, I for one did not feel inclined to blame him.

"You've heard who it was, haven't you?" I said.

"No. Who?"

Philip told him. His eyes opened very wide.

"Not the fellow I've heard you talk about?"

Esdaile nodded gloomily.

"And you mean he fired the pistol?"

There was an embarrassed silence. Nobody so far had ventured to express his thought quite so nakedly. We had an obscure feeling of resentment, as if Monty had been a little lacking in tact. He sat up on his stool and pursed his lips into the shape of a whistle.

"I—say! That makes it the dickens, doesn't it? Well, I know what his eyes looked like, I can promise you that! Poor devil! Thank goodness you were all too busy watching Philip when he came up from down below to notice me much. Nobody noticed me except Audrey, and she——"

Philip sliced his words off like a guillotine.

"You haven't told her anything about this, have you?"

Monty stared at him. "No," he replied, "as a matter of fact I haven't; but what if I had? I don't quite see——"

"Then you see you jolly well don't," Philip curtly ordered him. "Four's quite enough. You understand?"

"Four's quite enough." Do you see what was already working in his mind, and what a sudden jump forward our Case took when his lips uttered that concluding word?

For he did not say "enough" for what. The What was only just dimly beginning to appear. Perhaps I shall save time if I put what I mean into the form of a single question:—

Why had Esdaile, who knew perfectly well that that pistol ought to be in the custody of the police, not himself immediately handed it over?

Why indeed did he not do so now?

That is what I am getting at. He had not only not handed the pistol over, but he had drawn blinds and grubbed about floors and had sought high and low, though so far in vain, for a stray bullet. Nay, he might lecture Monty on the picking up of random pistols, but what else had he himself done when he had found that little empty brass case in the garden and had slipped it into his waistcoat pocket? He had pretended to hold back until Monty should have told him everything. Well, Monty had now told him everything.

There was a telephone in the hall. Ten seconds would suffice.

Yet Esdaile did nothing.

I was conscious of a curious quickening of excitement. The whole atmosphere of our little gathering had already changed. Monty, sitting on his stool, seemed somehow less of a culprit, Esdaile something much more nearly in collusion with him. And above all it distinctly began to appear—dare I say "providential"?—that Monty had picked up that pistol.

Why?

Was it because Chummy Smith, instead of being a stranger who must be left to take the consequences of his own acts, was Hubbard's and Esdaile's friend?

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