“I was coming to that.  I was standing outside, considering what I would say to my uncle, when the door opened and she and Thalassa came out.”

“Did you not speak to them?”

“I went to do so, but they disappeared in the darkness of the moors before I could reach them.  I hastened after them, but I got off the road track and wandered about the moors for nearly half an hour before I could find my way back to Flint House.”

“And found the door open and your uncle lying dead upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Why have you not come forward with this story before?”

“How could I expect any one to believe a story which sounds improbable in my own ears?  Even my father refused to believe it—­then, or afterwards.”

“Still, you might have cleared Miss Turold on the question of time.  There was the stopped clock, you know.  You reached Flint House shortly after half-past eight, and went upstairs thirty minutes later.”

Charles Turold was subtle enough to see that this remark covered more than a trap.  It suggested that Barrant discredited the whole of his story.  The hood clock in the dead man’s study had pointed to half-past nine on the night he was killed.  Thalassa’s story, as it stood, proved that Sisily must have left the house long before then.  But Charles’s story threw suspicion back on to Sisily by suggesting that the police had been misled about the time of the murder, which must have been committed at least half an hour earlier than they assumed.  Charles did not attempt to point out this supposed flaw in the detective’s reasoning.  He confined himself to a reply which was a strict statement of fact, so far as it went.

“Until I heard Thalassa’s story to-day I had no idea of the time of my own arrival at Flint House on that night,” he said.

“The clock found lying on the floor upstairs was stopped at half-past nine,” remarked Barrant with a reflective air, as though turning over all the facts in his mind.  “According to the story told you by Thalassa, he and Miss Turold left the house shortly after half-past eight.  Thalassa could not have returned until after half-past nine.  He found the house in darkness, his wife lying unconscious in the kitchen, and his master dead upstairs.  Thalassa, retracting his previous statement that he was not out of Flint House that night, for the first time tells of some mysterious avenger who, he thinks, killed Robert Turold while he was out of the house with Miss Turold.  Thalassa now suggests (if I understand you rightly) that this man Remington, wronged by Robert Turold many years before, was lurking outside in the darkness, and seized the opportunity of Thalassa’s absence to enter the house and murder the man who had wronged him.  Have I got it right?”

“Yes,” said Charles, “you have it right.”

“The story rests on Thalassa’s bare statement, and Thalassa is a facile liar.”  Barrant’s tone was scornful.