He had spoken so seriously that Alec gaped at him in surprise. “Good Lord, what’s up now?” he asked. “Well, I won’t say in so many words,” Roger replied slowly, “because it’s really too fantastic. But it’s to do with the breaking of that second vase. You remember I said that in order for it to have smashed like that it must have been struck extraordinarily hard by some mysterious object. It’s just occurred to me what that object might possibly have been.” He walked across to where the chair was still standing in front of the fireplace and stepped up on to it. Then, with a glance towards the chair he had just left, he began to examine the woodwork at the back of the chimney-piece. Alec watched him in silence. Suddenly he bent forward with close attention and prodded a finger at the panel; and Alec noticed that his face had gone very pale. He turned and descended, a little unsteadily, from the chair. “My hat, but I was right!” he exclaimed softly, staring at Alec with raised eyebrows. “That second vase was smashed by a bullet! You’ll find its mark just behind that little pillar on the left there.” Chapter VIII Mr. Sheringham Becomes Startling For a moment there was silence between the two. Then: “Great Scott!” Alec remarked. “Absolutely certain?” “Absolutely. It’s a bullet mark all right. The bullet isn’t there, but it must have just embedded itself in the wood and been dug out with a pen-knife. You can see the marks of the blade round the hole. Get up and have a look.” Alec stepped on to the chair and felt the hole in the wood with a large forefinger. “Couldn’t be an old mark, could it?” he asked, examining it curiously. “Some of this panelling’s been pretty well knocked about.” “No; I thought of that. An old hole would have the edges more or less smoothed down; those are quite jagged and splintery. And where the knife’s cut the wood away the surface is quite different to the rest. Not so dark. No; that mark’s a recent one, all right.” Alec got down from the chair. “What do you make of it?” he asked abruptly. “I’m not sure,” said Roger slowly. “It means rather a drastic rearrangement of our ideas, doesn’t it? But I’ll tell you one highly important fact, and that is that a line from this mark through the middle of the ring in the dust leads straight to the chair in front of the writing table. That seems to me jolly significant. I tell you what. Let’s go out on to the lawn and talk it over. We don’t want to stay in here too long in any case.” He carefully replaced the chair on the hearth-rug in its proper position and walked out into the garden. Alec dutifully followed, and they made for the cedar tree once more. “Go on,” said the latter when they were seated. “This is going to be interesting.”