It was nine o'clock, but still just light enough to distinguish the prominent features of the landscape, when Carrados, accompanied by Parkinson, reached Barony. The house, as described by the man-servant, was a substantial grey stone building, very plain, very square, very exposed to the four winds. It had not even a porch to break the flat surface, and here and there in the line of its three solid storeys a window had been built up by some frugal, tax-evading Whitmarsh of a hundred years ago. "Sombre enough," commented Carrados, "but the connexion between environment and crime is not yet capable of analysis. We get murders in brand-new suburban villas and the virtues, light-heartedness and good-fellowship, in moated granges. What should you say about it, eh, Parkinson?" "I should say it was damp, sir," observed Parkinson, with his wisest air. Madeline Whitmarsh herself opened the door. She took them down the long flagged hall to the dining-room, a cheerful enough apartment whatever its exterior might forebode. "I am glad you have come now, Mr Carrados," she said hurriedly, when the door was closed. "Sergeant Brewster is here from Stinbridge police station to make some arrangements for the inquest. It is to be held at the schools here on Monday. He says that he must take the revolver with him to produce. Do you want to see it before he goes?" "I should like to," replied Carrados. "Will you come into papa's room then? He is there." The sergeant was at the table, making notes in his pocket-book, when they entered. An old-fashioned revolver lay before him. "This gentleman has come a long way on hearing about poor papa," said the girl. "He would like to see the revolver before you take it, Mr Brewster." "Good-evening, sir," said Brewster. "It's a bad business that brings us here." Carrados "looked" round the room and returned the policeman's greeting. Madeline hesitated for a moment, and then, picking up the weapon, put it into the blind man's hand. "A bit out of date, sir," remarked Brewster, with a nod. "But in good order yet, I find." "An early French make, I should say; one of Lefaucheux's probably," said Carrados. "You have removed the cartridges?" "Why, yes," admitted the sergeant, producing a matchbox from his pocket. "They're pin-fire, you see, and I'm not too fond of carrying a thing like that loaded in my pocket as I'm riding a young horse." "Quite so," agreed Carrados, fingering the cartridges. "I wonder if you happened to mark the order of these in the chambers?" "That was scarcely necessary, sir. Two, together, had been fired; the other four had not." "I once knew a case--possibly I read of it--where a pack of cards lay on the floor. It was a murder case and the guilt or innocence of an accused man depended on the relative positions of the fifty-first and fifty-second cards."