A.  “No.”

Q.  “How long between your warning Mr. Clark and the shot?”

A.  “I suppose I’d gone a dozen yards.”

Q.  “Were you present when the revolver was found?”

A.  “No, sir.”

Q.  “Did you see Judson Clark again?”

A.  “No, sir.  From what I gather he went straight to the corral
  and got his horse.”

Q.  “You entered the room as Mrs. Lucas came in the door?”

A.  “Well, she’s wrong about that.  She was there a little ahead
  of me.  She’d reached the body before I got in.  She was
  stooping over it.”

Bassett looked up from his reading.

“I want you to get this, Livingstone,” he said.  “How did she reach the billiard room?  Where was it in the house?”

“Off the end of the living-room.”

“A large living-room?”

“Forty or forty-five feet, about.”

“Will you draw it for me, roughly?”

He passed over a pad and pencil, and Dick made a hasty outline.  Bassett watched with growing satisfaction.

“Here’s the point,” he said, when Dick had finished.  “She was there before Donaldson, or at the same time,” as Dick made an impatient movement.  “But he had only a dozen yards to go.  She was in her room, upstairs.  To get down in that time she had to leave her room, descend a staircase, cross a hall and run the length of the living-room, forty-five feet.  If the case had ever gone to trial she’d have had to do some explaining.”

“She or Donaldson,” Dick said obstinately.

Bassett read on: 

Jean Melis called and sworn.

Q.  “Your name?”

A.  “Jean Melis.”

Q.  “Have you an American residence, Mr. Melis?”

A.  “Only where I am employed.  I am now living at the Clark
  ranch.”

Q.  “What is your business?”

A.  “I am Mr. Clark’s valet.”

Q.  “It was you who found Mr. Clark’s revolver?”

A.  “Yes.”

Q.  “Tell about how and where you found it.”

A.  “I made a search early in the evening.  I will not hide from you that I meant to conceal it if I discovered it.  A man who is drunk is not guilty of what he does.  I did not find it.  I went back that night, when the people had gone, and found it beneath the carved woodbox, by the fireplace.  I did not know that the sheriff had placed a man outside the window.”

“Get that, too,” Bassett said, putting down the paper.  “The Frenchman was fond of you, and he was doing his blundering best.  But the sheriff expected you back and had had the place watched, so they caught him.  But that’s not the point.  A billiard room is a hard place to hide things in.  I take it yours was like the average.”

Dick nodded.

“All right.  This poor boob of a valet made a search and didn’t find it.  Later he found it.  Why did he search?  Wasn’t it the likely thing that you’d carried it away with you?  Do you suppose for a moment that with Donaldson and the woman in the room you hid it there, and then went back and stood behind the roulette table, leaning on it with both hands, and staring?  Not at all.  Listen to this: