It was a bright and sunny day when Gebb found himself once more at Kirkstone Hall. In the sunshine the building looked grim and desolate. The smokeless chimneys, the closed doors, dusty windows, and grass-grown terraces, gave the place a forlorn and wretched aspect; and the absence of life, the silence broken only by the twittering of the birds, the neglected gardens, created, even to the detective's prosaic mind, an atmosphere of menace and dread. It looked like a place with a history; and Gebb wondered if Miss Wedderburn, on becoming its mistress, would care to inhabit it again. "When she marries Ferris and begins a new life, I dare say she will seek some more cheerful abode," he thought, as he stood on the terrace, and looked on the silent house. "It would be foolish for a young couple to dwell with the ghosts of the past. I am not imaginative myself, but I should not care to live here; no, not if the house was given to me rent free. If I were Miss Wedderburn I'd pull it down and build a new place without a past or a ghost." While Gebb soliloquized thus, he heard a hoarse voice in the distance, and saw Martin, spade on shoulder, passing across the lawn singing one of his gruesome songs. Evidently he had caught sight of the detective on the terrace, for not until he came towards him did he begin to sing. Then he danced grotesquely over the green turf, croaking his wild ditty, and looking a strange figure in the strong sunshine; yet not unsuited to the lonely place, with its grim associations:-- "When moon shines clear my shadow and I Dance in the silver light; When moon lies hid in a cloudy sky My shadow with her takes flight. And I remain, in the falling rain, Calling upon my shadow in vain: 'Oh, shadow dear, I wait you here, Alone in the lonely night.'" When he came close to Gebb he stopped his song and dance suddenly, and looked inquiringly at the detective with his head on one side. "What do you want?" he croaked. "There is nothing here but death and misery." "I've come to look at the house, Martin. Can you show me over it?" "No, no," said the gardener, shaking his head. "I don't walk through the valley of dry bones. If you sit in the Yellow Room you hear the dead tell secrets." "What kind of secrets?" asked Gebb, humouring him. "How the sister killed the brother, and how she who killed them both laughed and laughed. 'But she died at last in deep despair When Satan caught her in his snare.'" Gebb looked fixedly at the man. He had been in the house at the time of the Kirkstone murder, so it might be that his poor wits retained a memory of the tragedy. Was it possible that light could be thrown on its darkness by this madman? The detective asked himself that question once or twice as he listened to the poor creature rambling on, how Laura had killed her brother at the instigation of Miss Gilmar. "And is Mr. Dean innocent?" he asked suddenly.