“‘I don’t know. I’ll go and ask him.’ I was still trying to adjust this new development—and her next words seemed to come from a great distance. “‘Do something. For God’s sake—do something.’ “Then she turned and left me, and I watched her go up the stairs, walking stiffly and clinging to the banisters. “So Jack had been there! And old Marley was dead! Murdered! Hit on the head with a poker. And Jack had been there. It’s only in romantic fiction that the reader is expected to assume the impossibility of the hero committing a crime, owing to the extreme beauty of his nature. And this wasn’t romantic fiction. It was hard, brutal reality. The two facts stood there, side by side, in all their dazzling simplicity. Jack’s nature was not supremely beautiful. He was an ordinary man, with the devil of a temper when it was roused. “Mechanically I started to walk back to the room where I had left the other three men. They were sitting in silence when I entered, and after a while the stranger got up. “‘A dreadful thing to happen,’ he said, gravely. “‘May I ask, sir,’ I began, ‘how you came to discover it?’ “‘Very simply,’ he answered. ‘I was strolling along the road, going back to the village inn where I have been stopping for two or three nights, when I saw the window of the room through the trees. The light was shining out, and I could see someone sitting at the desk. More out of idle curiosity than anything else, I paused for a moment or two, and then something began to arouse my suspicions. The man at the desk seemed so motionless. I thought perhaps he had fainted, or was ill, and after a little hesitation I went in at the gate and looked through the window. To my horror I saw he was dead—and I at once came round to the other room from which the light was shining, and where I found you.’ “‘There is a point which may have some bearing on the crime,’ he continued, after a pause. ‘On my way up from the inn a man passed me. He was coming from this direction, and seemed to me to be in a very excited condition. It was his obvious agitation that made me notice him at the time, though in the dim light I couldn’t see his face very clearly. But he was swinging his stick in the air, and muttering to himself. At the moment I didn’t think much about it. But now——’ He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘Of course, I may be completely wrong, but I think it is a thing worth mentioning to the police.’ “‘Would you know the man again?’ I asked, trying to speak quite normally. “‘Well, he was tall—six feet at least—and broad. And he was clean-shaven.’ He spoke thoughtfully, weighing his words. ‘I might know him again—but I wouldn’t swear to it. One has to be doubly careful if a man’s life is at stake.’