An odd _strumming_ sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness. Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him was shattered with a great deal of noise. A shot!… a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue!… a shriek from somewhere on the west front… and I ran out on to the drive. With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground! Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking pistol in his hand! “Haufmann!” he cried, and again, “Haufmann!” The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in the darkness. “Good boy!” he panted. “I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!” Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann, breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine face. “Gee!” came the cry. “It’s _Corpus Chris!_” V “Where did I get hold upon the clue?” asked Moris Klaw, when he, Haufmann, and I sat, in the gray dawn, waiting for the police to come and take away the body of Costa. “It was from the brain of Ottley! His poor mind”--he waved long hands circularly in the air--“goes round and round about the thing that happened to him on the balcony.” “And what was that?” demanded Haufmann, eagerly. “Same as happened to me?” “It was something--something that his knowledge of strange things tells him is venomous--which struck his wrist as he raised his revolver! What did he do? I can tell you; because he is doing it over and over again in his poor feverish mind. He clapped to the injured wrist the barrel of his revolver and fired! Then, swooning, he toppled over and fell among the bushes. The wound that so had puzzled all becomes explained. It was self-inflicted--a precaution--a cauterizing; and it saved his life. For I saw Sir Bartram Vane to-day and he had spoken with the other doctor on the telephone. The new treatment succeeds.” “I am still in the dark!” confessed Haufmann. “Yes?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “So? Why do I go to Brighton? I go to ask Miss Greta what Ottley would have asked her.” “And that is?” “What she feared that made her so very anxious to get you away from your home. To me she admitted that she had received from the man Costa impassioned appeals, such as, foolish girl, she had been afraid to show to you--her father!” “Good heavens! the scamp!”