“She was a brave woman, if ever there was one. Can you not picture her, knowing her husband’s violent temper, his indomitable pride, and guessing that he would find some means of being revenged on the Earl of Okehampton. Can you not imagine her watching her husband and gradually guessing, realising what he had in his mind when, in the middle of the night, she saw him steal out of bed and out of the house? Can you not see her following him stealthily—afraid of him, perhaps—not daring to interfere—terrified above all things of the consequences of his crime, of the risks of Cockram waking up, of the exposure, the disgrace? “Then the final tableau:—Keeson having accomplished his purpose, goes back towards the house, and she—perhaps with a vague hope that she might yet save the mare by taking away the poison which Keeson had prepared—in her turn goes to the stables. But this time the groom is half awake, and challenges her. Then her instinct—that unerring instinct which always prompts a really good woman when the loved one is in danger—suggests to Mrs. Keeson the clever subterfuge of pretending that she had seen her son entering the stables. “She asks for him, _knowing well that she could do him no harm_ since he could so easily prove an _alibi_, but thereby throwing a veritable cloud of dust in the eyes of the keenest enquirer, and casting over the hocussing of Cigarette so thick a mantle of mystery that suspicion, groping blindly round, could never fasten tightly on any one. “Think of it all,” he added as, gathering up his hat and umbrella, he prepared to go, “and remember at the same time that it was Mr. Keeson alone who could disprove that his wife never left her room that night, that he did not do this, that he guessed what she had done and why she had done it, and I think that you will admit that not one link is missing in the chain of evidence which I have had the privilege of laying before you.” Before I could reply he had gone, and I saw his strange scarecrow-like figure disappearing through the glass door. Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery. III. The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace Chapter I “It is not by any means the Law and Police Courts that form the only interesting reading in the daily papers,” said the man in the corner airily, as he munched his eternal bit of cheesecake and sipped his glass of milk, like a frowsy old tom-cat. “You don’t agree with me,” he added, for I offered no comment to his obvious remark. “No?” I answered. “I suppose you were thinking——” “Of the tragic death of Mrs. Yule, for instance,” he replied eagerly. “Beyond the inquest, and its very unsatisfactory verdict, very few circumstances connected with that interesting case ever got into the papers at all.”