“Before then. There was another lady upon whom he set his heart,” replied Carver. “Lander, as I say, had to hurry up his scheme when he found that the money was going to be left away. He was only waiting his opportunity. The plan had been completed to the smallest detail. He had practiced with the key trick assiduously, and he decided to put the plan into operation on the day the murder was committed. He knew that his uncle generally spent his Saturday afternoons in the vault, that the doors leading to the vault would be open. His first job was to get rid of the servant. By some means he discovered that Walters was a crook: I have an idea that there was a time when Lander was an industrious student of crime, and I seem to remember somebody telling me that he used to spend hours at the ‘Megaphone’ library and made himself very unpopular in consequence.” Tab nodded. “That is where he might have become acquainted with Walters, or Felling, though I am not going to dogmatise on the subject. It is sufficient that he found that Walters was a convicted thief, and that on the afternoon of the murder he sent a telegram (which I have been able to trace) to Walters, telling him the police were coming for him at three. From the moment he saw that telegram delivered, and he must have been watching, to the moment that Walters left the house, Lander was somewhere handy. As soon as he saw the door opened, and Walters came out, he made his appearance. When Walters had gone, he went into the house, passed down the steps into the passage, and found, as he had expected, his uncle working at the table, probably checking some money that had come in during the week--a favourite occupation of his. Without warning he shot the old man dead. Then, looking round for the key, he found that it was not, as he had expected, in the lock, but on the chain about Trasmere’s neck. He broke the chain and took out the key, which was blood-stained. He had a pin and thread ready which he fastened to the centre of the table, put the other end through the keyhole after threading the key, pulled the door to, locked it, and drew on the slack in exactly the same way as you saw and described, Tab. “I noticed one little blood-stain near the bottom of the door when I first inspected the cell, but could not make head or tail of it. Nor could I understand the appearance of a tiny piece of grit in the ward of the key. Both these mysteries have been solved. When the key was back on the table, he pulled out the pin, removed it from the cotton, which he put back in his pocket, and by some mischance, dropped the pin in the passage-way.” There was another long pause, and then: “Where is he now?” asked Carver irritably. The only man who could have supplied him with exact information was at that moment sleeping peacefully on a hard and narrow bed. XXXIX Yeh Ling wrote: