“Murdered him?”

“Well, manslaughtered him, anyway.  I may be wrong.  Anyway, it’s not my business.”

“But why do you think so?  Because of the keys?”

“Oh, the keys are a wash-out.  Still, it was a brilliant idea of mine, Wasn’t it?  And it would have been rather a score for me if they had all been outside.”

He had finished his writing, and now passed the paper over to Bill.  In the clear moonlight the carefully printed letters could easily be read: 

“Go on talking as if I were here.  After A minute or two, turn round as if I were sitting on the grass behind you, but go on talking.”

“I know you don’t agree with me,” Antony went on as Bill read, “but you’ll see that I’m right.”

Bill looked up and nodded eagerly.  He had forgotten golf and Betty and all the other things which had made up his world lately.  This was the real thing.  This was life.  “Well,” he began deliberately, “the whole point is that I know Mark.  Now, Mark—­”

But Antony was off the seat and letting himself gently down into the ditch.  His intention was to crawl round it until the shed came in sight.  The footsteps which he had heard seemed to be underneath the shed; probably there was a trap-door of some kind in the floor.  Whoever it was would have heard their voices, and would probably think it worth while to listen to what they were saying.  He might do this merely by opening the door a little without showing himself, in which case Antony would have found the entrance to the passage without any trouble to himself.  But when Bill turned his head and talked over the back of the seat, it was probable that the listener would find it necessary to put his head outside in order to hear, and then Antony would be able to discover who it was.  Moreover, if he should venture out of his hiding-place altogether and peep at them over the top of the bank, the fact that Bill was talking over the back of the seat would mislead the watcher into thinking that Antony was still there, sitting on the grass, no doubt, behind the seat, swinging his legs over the side of the ditch.

He walked quickly but very silently along the half-length of the bowling-green to the first corner, passed cautiously round, and then went even more carefully along the width of it to the second corner.  He could hear Bill hard at it, arguing from his knowledge of Mark’s character that this, that and the other must have happened, and he smiled appreciatively to himself.  Bill was a great conspirator worth a hundred Watsons.  As he approached the second corner he slowed down, and did the last few yards on hands and knees.  Then, lying at full length, inch by inch his head went round the corner.

The shed was two or three yards to his left, on the opposite side of the ditch.  From where he lay he could see almost entirely inside it.  Everything seemed to be as they left it.  The bowls-box, the lawn-mower, the roller, the open croquet-box, the—­