"I happened to move it myself not so long before Sir Reginald came into the room, and that's how I know for certain where it was standing and that it wasn't broken. And yon wee light tables dinna lose their legs just with being cowped, supposing there was nothing else than that to smash them. No, sir, it was poor Sir Reginald falling on top of it that smashed yon leg." "Then he was certainly struck down near the window!" "Well, we'll see that in a minute. It's no in reason, Mr. Cromarty, to suppose he deliberately opened the windie to let his ain murderer in. And it's a' just stuff and nonsense to suggest Sir Reginald was sitting on a winter's night--or next door to winter onyhow, with his windie wide open. I'm too well acquaint with his habits to believe that for a minute. And it's impossible the man can have opened a snibbed windie and got in, with some one sitting in the room, and no alarm given. So it's perfectly certain the man must have come in at the door. That's a fair deduction, is it not, sir?" Ned Cromarty frowned into space in silence. When he spoke it seemed to be as much to himself as to Bisset. "How did the window get unsnibbed? Everything beats me, but that beats me fairly." "Well, sir, Mr. Rattar may no be just exac'ly as intellectual as me and you, but I think there's maybe something in his idea it was done to put us off the scent." "Possibly--but it strikes me as a derned feeble dodge. However, what's your next conclusion?" "My next conclusion is, sir, that Simon Rattar may not be so vera far wrong either about Sir Reginald hearing some one at the door and starting to see who it was. Then--bang!--the door would suddenly open, and afore he'd time to speak, the man had given him a bat on the heid that finished him." "And where does the table come in?" "Well, my explanation is just this, that Sir Reginald suspected something and took the wee table as a kind of weapon." "Rot!" said Ned ruthlessly. "You think he left the fireplace and went round by the window to fetch such a useless weapon as that?" James Bisset was not easily damped. "That's only a possibility, sir. Excluding that, what must have happened? For that's the way, Mr. Cromarty, to get at the fac's; you just exclude what's not possible and what remains is the truth. If you'd read----" "Well, come on. What's your theory now?" "Just that Sir Reginald backed away from the door with the man after him, till he got to the table. And then down went him and the table together." "And why didn't he cry out or raise the alarm in some way while he was backing away?" "God, but that fits into my other deductions fine!" cried Bisset. "I hadna thought of that. Just wait, sir, till you see how the case is going to hang together in a minute." "But how did Sir Reginald's body come to be lying near the door?" The philosopher seemed to be inspired afresh.