The stranger in the next room, whosoever he was, had been murdered. The key of that room had been found in this one; also, on the bed-quilt had lain the weapon with which, presumably, the dead man's throat had been cut. Then there was the damning evidence of the bloody sleeve. Herries examined this, and found that the stains streaked downward from the elbow, as though someone with reddened fingers had drawn them down the woollen fabric. On making this discovery the unhappy man regained his feet, scenting a conspiracy. "Some enemy has done this," he argued, trying to keep himself cool and composed. "I have fallen into a trap. The assassin, after committing the crime, must have come deliberately into my room, in order to implicate me in the matter. I was sound asleep, so he could easily have smeared my sleeve and left the razor and key. But who could have done it, and why was it done? I know no one in these parts,--I arrived here alone and unknown, and----" He stopped as a sudden thought flashed through his brain. Michael Gowrie knew his name, and Gowrie had come to this very room on the previous evening with a glass of toddy. Could it be that Gowrie had murdered this unknown man, and had then arranged the snare, so that a perfectly innocent being should bear the penalty of his wickedness. It was credible, and yet,--from what Herries remembered of the old scamp,--Gowrie was not the man to commit so dreadful a deed. In his degraded state, the ex-minister would steal at a pinch in order to procure money for drink. He would lie glibly; he would blackmail, and bear false witness to serve his own ends; but Herries could not think even so base a man capable of murder. For one thing he would not have the nerve, seeing that drink had shattered his system. No! It would not be Gowrie, and yet, if not Gowrie, who could have an interest in implicating a stranger in the awful tragedy? Again, as Herries reflected when his brain became clearer, Mrs. Narby said that the gentleman, who had occupied the bedroom next door, had departed in his noticeable fur coat at eight o'clock. If it was he who had passed through the tap-room, it certainly could not be him, who was lying dead in the next room. The affair was puzzling, and not the least mysterious thing was that no one in the house knew the dead man's name. He had come to see someone and had duly retired to bed; next morning he was found dead. If this was the case, who then could be the man who had visited him on the previous night? Who was the man who had left at eight in the morning, disguised in a fur coat belonging to the dead? There could be but one answer. He was the assassin.