“Remarkable!” he said, when the story was unfolded, “most remarkable!  I can hardly recall any case where the features have been more peculiar.”

“I thought you would say so, Mr. Holmes,” said White Mason in great delight.  “We’re well up with the times in Sussex.  I’ve told you now how matters were, up to the time when I took over from Sergeant Wilson between three and four this morning.  My word!  I made the old mare go!  But I need not have been in such a hurry, as it turned out; for there was nothing immediate that I could do.  Sergeant Wilson had all the facts.  I checked them and considered them and maybe added a few of my own.”

“What were they?” asked Holmes eagerly.

“Well, I first had the hammer examined.  There was Dr. Wood there to help me.  We found no signs of violence upon it.  I was hoping that if Mr. Douglas defended himself with the hammer, he might have left his mark upon the murderer before he dropped it on the mat.  But there was no stain.”

“That, of course, proves nothing at all,” remarked Inspector MacDonald.  “There has been many a hammer murder and no trace on the hammer.”

“Quite so.  It doesn’t prove it wasn’t used.  But there might have been stains, and that would have helped us.  As a matter of fact there were none.  Then I examined the gun.  They were buckshot cartridges, and, as Sergeant Wilson pointed out, the triggers were wired together so that, if you pulled on the hinder one, both barrels were discharged.  Whoever fixed that up had made up his mind that he was going to take no chances of missing his man.  The sawed gun was not more than two foot long—­one could carry it easily under one’s coat.  There was no complete maker’s name; but the printed letters P-E-N were on the fluting between the barrels, and the rest of the name had been cut off by the saw.”

“A big P with a flourish above it, E and N smaller?” asked Holmes.

“Exactly.”

“Pennsylvania Small Arms Company—­well-known American firm,” said Holmes.

White Mason gazed at my friend as the little village practitioner looks at the Harley Street specialist who by a word can solve the difficulties that perplex him.

“That is very helpful, Mr. Holmes.  No doubt you are right.  Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Do you carry the names of all the gun makers in the world in your memory?”

Holmes dismissed the subject with a wave.

“No doubt it is an American shotgun,” White Mason continued.  “I seem to have read that a sawed-off shotgun is a weapon used in some parts of America.  Apart from the name upon the barrel, the idea had occurred to me.  There is some evidence then, that this man who entered the house and killed its master was an American.”

MacDonald shook his head.  “Man, you are surely travelling overfast,” said he.  “I have heard no evidence yet that any stranger was ever in the house at all.”