“But her own guilt!” she said in tones of great dignity.  “No, Mr. Anderson, granting that she knows where that paper is—­and she has not said that she does—­I shall want more time and much legal advice before I allow her to turn it over to you.”

All the unconscious note of command that long-inherited wealth and the pride of a great name can give was in her voice, and the detective, for the moment, bowed before it, defeated.  Perhaps he thought of men who had been broken from the Force for injudicious arrests, perhaps he merely bided his time.  At any rate, he gave up his grilling of Dale for the present and turned to question the Doctor and Beresford who had just returned, with Jack Bailey, from their grim task of placing Fleming’s body in a temporary resting place in the library.

“Well, Doctor?” he grunted.

The Doctor shook his head

“Poor fellow—­straight through the heart.”

“Were there any powder marks?” queried Miss Cornelia.

“No—­and the clothing was not burned.  He was apparently shot from some little distance—­and I should say from above.”

The detective received this information without the change of a muscle in his face.  He turned to Beresford—­resuming his attack on Dale from another angle.

“Beresford, did Fleming tell you why he came here tonight?”

Beresford considered the question.

“No.  He seemed in a great hurry, said Miss Ogden had telephoned him, and asked me to drive him over.”

“Why did you come up to the house?”

“We-el,” said Beresford with seeming candor, “I thought it was putting rather a premium on friendship to keep me sitting out in the rain all night, so I came up the drive—­and, by the way!” He snapped his fingers irritatedly, as if recalling some significant incident that had slipped his memory, and drew a battered object from his pocket.  “I picked this up, about a hundred feet from the house,” he explained.  “A man’s watch.  It was partly crushed into the ground, and, as you see, it’s stopped running.”

The detective took the object and examined it carefully.  A man’s open-face gold watch, crushed and battered in as if it had been trampled upon by a heavy heel.

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully.  “Stopped running at ten-thirty.”

Beresford went on, with mounting excitement.

“I was using my pocket-flash to find my way and what first attracted my attention was the ground—­torn up, you know, all around it.  Then I saw the watch itself.  Anybody here recognize it?”

The detective silently held up the watch so that all present could examine it.  He waited.  But if anyone in the party recognized the watch—­no one moved forward to claim it.

“You didn’t hear any evidence of a struggle, did you?” went on Beresford.  “The ground looked as if a fight had taken place.  Of course it might have been a dozen other things.”