I LEAPT to my feet and stared at him.

"Drowned?" I gasped.

"No, he was shot first with a pistol at close quarters. I've just been examining the body." "Where was it found?" "Away right at the very north end."

episode rushed

Yesterday's into my mind. "At the very end?" "Practically."

"It wasn't by any chance as much as half a mile on this side?"

He stared at me curiously, and I remembered that this was certainly an odd inquiry, and also that Mr Hobhouse was speaking very concisely.

"No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

I took refuge in an ultraHobhousian explanation of how I had been there myself a few days ago, and it had struck me as a very murderouslooking place; and then I asked

"Is anything more known, doetor?"

"No," he answered; and then added abruptly and with unusual energy, "this is absolutely damnable!"

He walked out of the room again as he spoke, and I was left to my thoughts. I went

into the smoking-room but forgot to light my pipe. With my head in my hands I bent over the fire and tried, in the first place, to grasp this second tragedy, and then to piece things together and see some sequence in them.

That Bolton had really been on the right scent now seemed highly probable, though, as he made no concealment of his business, it was possible that an agency which had tried to murder me, defied all efforts to check it for months, and to all seeming had lately blown up a oruiser, might get rid of him simply on general principles. Still, the working hypothesis must be that he had got on to their track. And, oh! if he had only told me what he had discovered! But that secret had died with him, and now once more one must begin all over again.

Yet this time I had secured one significant-looking starting-point. The coincidence of Jock's appearance out at that lonely place more or less about the time when the murder must have taken place, and his leading me away in another direction from that in which I was heading, was certainly suggestive. The oreature had exhibited more ap

pearance of intelligence than I had given him credit for, and might he not then be used by some one who knew him well and had strong influence over him to play such a simple part as he had acted? Supposing he were with such a person, and that person saw me coming and did not wish me to spy him, how easy it would be to say, "Go, Jock, and show that gentleman stones over there!'

As to whom to suspect of having such influence over him, that was easy enough. I recalled young Peter Scollay's stare and laugh when I suggested that they were going to look at the ship, and it sounded to me now a very sinister laugh.

And yet the more I thought over all this, the more objections I saw. In the first place, the body was not found where I had seen Jock. True, it might have been moved if the murderer had been wily and suspicious enough to think that the simple Mr Hobhouse was capable of connecting the harmless episode of the stones with his gruesome work, though even that seemed to imply more than was likely; but a more formidable difficulty was the evidence of educated cunning in every orime committed or attempted by that hand. For "that hand" I decided I must certainly substitute "those hands." I had always thought there was more than one in it, and now I felt surer of this than

ever.

as they say, I heard Dr Rendall go into dinner and then come out again into the hall, and then I heard him, instead of coming into the smoking-room, open and shut the front door. He had evidently gone out again, and I was not sorry to be left alone.

A little later, in the same absent-minded way, I heard the front-door bell faintly ring, and I only woke out of my reverie when the smoking-room door opened.

"Dr Rendall is out, I hear," said a voice that made me jump up very hurriedly.

It was Jean Rendall, delightful to look at as ever, but with a new expression on her face. If she was not anxious, and very keenly anxious too, about something, I was much mistaken.

Unwillingly I resumed the rôle of Thomas Hobhouse, and informed her nervously that the doctor had gone out, I knew not where.

She said nothing for a moment, but still lingered. Then she said

"What a dreadful thing about poor Mr Bolton!"

"Dreadful!" agreed Mr Hobhouse. "Terrible! Dreadful!

Terrible!"

"Did my cousin tell you much about it?"

"Oh no, not much-very little. He was upset, very much upset, I could see."

"Oh yes, I am distresseddreadfully distressed."

Again she was silent, but still she lingered.

"I am going to walk home again," she said suddenly. "Would you care to walk a little way with me?"

At that moment I wanted my own company, and had a certain shrinking from hers; so the voice of Mr Hobhouse bleated something about having caught a slight chill.

"Please come a little way," she said. "I want to speak to you particularly."

There was a note of appeal

Thomas Hobhouse to resist. Besides, he felt exceedingly curious. Her whole manner during the interview, in fact, roused a very strong sensation of curiosity.

He got his hat and his coat (Mr Hobhouse always wore a topcoat), and they crunched their way down the knobly drive and passed out into the road, neither saying a word. And then Mr Hobhouse got the most rousing eye-opener of his career, or of Roger Merton's either. She turned to him and said quietly—

"I hope you are taking care of your own life, Mr Merton."

A second or two passed before I was able to answer at all, and even then my first remark was not in the least worthy of the occasion, but it expressed precisely what was in my mind.

"How the-how on earth did you find me out?"

She smiled a little, but her manner was anxious still.

"I haven't lived all my life in Ransay," she said. "I have even been to London, and to quite a good many London theatres. In fact, I've seen you act before, Mr Merton."

"What an extraordinary way to be found out!" I thought, and aloud I said"But my name isn't on the programme in Ransay."

"It was, when you were

last here, you must remember," said she.

I looked at her for a moment, and she at me, and in that exchange of glances I decided emphatically that there was no sign of evil in those eyes. Anyhow, I stood to lose nothing if I got her confidence, and my own could be withheld or not as I saw fit.

"We might as well be frank," I said. "How exactly did you come to spot me?"

Again she smiled, and each time she smiled straight at me like that, I confess frankly I grew less cautious.

"Do you remember when Captain Whiteolett came to arrest you, your bedroom door was open just for a minute?"

She paused, and I finished the sentence for her

"A spy."

"Well, are you honestly surprised? You did do some most extraordinary things, Mr Merton! I only began to get the least idea of what you were about some time afterwards."

"And what idea did you get then? And how did you get it?"

"It was when we began to hear of the bad name our island was getting. Then I guessed you must have been trying to investigate and catch the traitor-and I had gone and interfered-and even locked you up!"

"It was you, then?"

"Well, father, of course, approved, but I locked the door. And after I had found out the truth, I could have murdered myself! But why did you puzzle us so?"

Her charm and sincerity and animation almost made me tell her there and then, but I had just enough hold of myself to ask instead

"But this doesn't explain how you came to find me out this time?"

Well, in a way it does; for I knew then that Roger Merton was your real name, and then I remembered where

"Well, your face isn't all hidden by your beard, and I thought I recognised the other bits. If I hadn't known you

were an actor—"

"A pretty bad one, it appears," I interposed.

"Oh no, indeed, you were simply splendid! You still kept me puzzled and only half certain, even after I had met you and Captain Whiteolett walking together, and noticed you move apart when you S&W me. In fact, I wasn't sure till that walk along the shore. I arranged that to make quite certain."

"You arranged it!" I exclaimed, "The deuce you did, Miss Rendall!"

She laughed defiantly.

"I was dying to make sure! So when I saw you coming towards the house, I rushed into my things and went out to meet you. I thought if I could take you the same walk as we had been before, you could hardly help doing something to give yourself away. And at last you did!"

"May I ask what my relapse was?"

"When I got you to the same place as last time and said the same thing, I noticed you jump. And then you did really rather give yourself away when I asked you if

you wanted to look at the rooks, and you jumped at the chance. I know nothing about antiquities-not even as much as you do, Mr Merton-_"}

"Hit me again!" I laughed. "Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below highwater mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where something happened to you before."

"Where what happened?" I inquired.

"That's what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I've died to know what happened that night!" "How do you know anything happened?"

"I guessed," she said.

This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now.

"And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn't you unmask him at once?"

"Oh, but it wasn't my business to! Of course I had guessed what you were doing

tell me one thing more. Why on earth did you come out with me on that first walk-armed with that horse-pistol?"

'Oh, you saw it then?" she exclaimed.

"I almost smelt the slowmatch! But why did you do it?"

"Well, you know what I thought you were then, and there was no one else to go with you."

"Then you actually went out with a spy at night to keep an eye on him-and shoot him if he spied?"

"I should probably have missed!" she laughed.

I was quite ready to swear by Jean Rendall now. Talk of pluck!

"Please understand, Mr Merton," she went on earnestly, "that I should never have dreamt of letting you know that I had recognised you-I haven't even told father, I assure youonly when I heard of this dreadful death of Mr Bolton

She paused and glanced at me, half-apologetically, halfbeseechingly, it seemed.

"Well?" I said.

"Well, I realised the danger you were in supposing any body else guessed. And I thought I'd come and speak to you. I'm afraid I sometimes act on impulse."

"So do I," I confessed. "In fact I'm going to act on impulse now. Do you care to hear some bits of the story you don't know?"

Her eyes absolutely danced.

"Oh, I'd love to! I've been longing-dying to know the rest of it! I've guessed and