Before she fainted, Miss Hoode screamed. When other members of the household arrived they found her lying across her brother’s body. A search-party was at once instituted for possible murderers, and the police and a doctor notified. People were saying—Mr. Syme became confidential—that Miss Hoode’s mind had been unhinged by the shock. Nothing was yet known as to the identity of the criminal, but (here Mr. Syme gave vent to many a dark suggestion, implicating in turn every member of the household save his daughter). Anthony dammed the flow with a question. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “exactly who’s living in the house?” Mr. Syme grew voluble at once. Oh, yes. He knew all right. At the present moment there were Miss Hoode, two friends of the late Mr. Hoode’s, and the servants and the young gent—Mr. Deacon—what had been the corpse’s secretary. The names? Oh, yes, he could give the names all right. Servants—his daughter Elsie, housemaid; Mabel Smith, another housemaid; Martha Forrest, the cook; Lily Ingram, kitchen-maid; Annie Holt, parlour-maid; old Mr. Poole, the butler; Bob Belford, the other man-servant. Then there was Tom Diggle, the gardener, though he’d been in the cottage hospital for the last week and wasn’t out yet. And there was the chauffeur, Harry Wright. Of course, though, now he came to think of it, the gardener and the chauffeur didn’t rightly _live_ in the house, they shared the lodge. “And the two guests?” said Anthony. It is hard to believe, but he had assimilated that stream of names, had even correctly assigned to each the status and duties of its owner. “One gent, and one lady, sir. Oh, and there’s the lady’s own maid, sir. Girl with some Frenchy name. Duboise, would it be?” Mr. Syme was patently proud of his infallibility. “Mrs. Mainwaring the lady’s called—she’s a tall, ’andsome lady with goldy-like sort of ’air, sir. And the gent’s Sir Arthur Digby-Coates—and a very pleasant gent he is, sir, so Elsie says.” Anthony gave a start of pleasure. Digby-Coates was an acquaintance of his private-secretarial days. Digby-Coates might be useful. Hastings hadn’t told him. “There be Habbotshall, sir,” said Mr. Syme. Anthony looked up. On his left—they had been walking with the little Marle on their right—was a well-groomed, smiling garden, whose flower-beds, paths, pergolas, and lawns stretched up to the feet of one of the strangest houses within his memory.