Hewitt took the clock, unscrewed the winder and quickly stripped off the back, exposing the works. “See,” he said, “the bullet is lodged firmly among the wheels, and has been torn into snags and strips by the impact. The wheels themselves are ruined altogether. The central axle which carries the hands is bent. See there! Neither hand will move in the slightest. That bullet struck the axle and fixed those hands immovably at the moment of time when Algernon Rewse died. Look at the mainspring. It is less than half run out. Proof that the clock was going when the shot struck it. Main left Rewse alive and well at half-past nine. He did not return till two--when Rewse had been dead more than an hour.” “But then, hang it all! How about the lies, and the false certificate, and the bolting?” “Let me tell you the whole tale, Mr. Bowyer, as I conjecture it to have been. Poor young Rewse was, as you told me, in a bad state of health--thoroughly run down, I think you said. You said something of his engagement and the death of the lady. This pointed clearly to a nervous--a mental upset. Very well. He broods, and so forth. He must go away and find change of scene and occupation. His intimate friend Main brings him here. The holiday has its good effect perhaps, at first, but after a while it gets monotonous, and brooding sets in again. I do not know whether or not you happen to know it, but it is a fact that four-fifths of all persons suffering from melancholia have suicidal tendencies. This may never have been suspected by Main, who otherwise might not have left him so long alone. At any rate he _is_ left alone, and he takes the opportunity. He writes a note to Main, and a long letter to his mother--an awful, heartbreaking letter, with a terrible picture of the mental agony wherein he was to die--perhaps with a tincture of religious mania in it, and prophesying merited hell for himself in the hereafter. This done, he simply stands up from this table, at which he has been writing, and with his back to the fireplace shoots himself. There he lies till Main returns an hour later. Main finds the door shut, and nobody answers his knock. He goes round to the sitting-room window, looks through, and perhaps he sees the body. Anyway he pushes back the catch with his knife, opens the window and gets in, and _then_ he sees. He is completely knocked out of time. The thing is terrible. What shall he--what can he do? Poor Rewse’s mother and sister dote on him, and his mother is an invalid--heart disease. To let her see that awful letter would be to kill her. He burns the letter, also the note to himself. Then an idea strikes him. Even without the letter the news of her boy’s suicide will probably kill the poor old lady. Can she be prevented hearing of it? Of his death she must know--that’s inevitable. But as to the manner? Would it not be possible to concoct some kind lie? And then the opportunities of the situation occur to him. Nobody but himself knows of it.