She had therefore taken her to the bedroom, and endeavoured to soothe her.  She was greatly excited, trembling all over, but made no other attempt to go downstairs.  She just sat in her dressing gown by her bedroom fire, with her head sunk in her hands.  Mrs. Allen stayed with her most of the night.  As to the other servants, they had all gone to bed, and the alarm did not reach them until just before the police arrived.  They slept at the extreme back of the house, and could not possibly have heard anything.

So far the housekeeper could add nothing on cross-examination save lamentations and expressions of amazement.

Cecil Barker succeeded Mrs. Allen as a witness.  As to the occurrences of the night before, he had very little to add to what he had already told the police.  Personally, he was convinced that the murderer had escaped by the window.  The bloodstain was conclusive, in his opinion, on that point.  Besides, as the bridge was up, there was no other possible way of escaping.  He could not explain what had become of the assassin or why he had not taken his bicycle, if it were indeed his.  He could not possibly have been drowned in the moat, which was at no place more than three feet deep.

In his own mind he had a very definite theory about the murder.  Douglas was a reticent man, and there were some chapters in his life of which he never spoke.  He had emigrated to America when he was a very young man.  He had prospered well, and Barker had first met him in California, where they had become partners in a successful mining claim at a place called Benito Canon.  They had done very well; but Douglas had suddenly sold out and started for England.  He was a widower at that time.  Barker had afterwards realized his money and come to live in London.  Thus they had renewed their friendship.

Douglas had given him the impression that some danger was hanging over his head, and he had always looked upon his sudden departure from California, and also his renting a house in so quiet a place in England, as being connected with this peril.  He imagined that some secret society, some implacable organization, was on Douglas’s track, which would never rest until it killed him.  Some remarks of his had given him this idea; though he had never told him what the society was, nor how he had come to offend it.  He could only suppose that the legend upon the placard had some reference to this secret society.

“How long were you with Douglas in California?” asked Inspector MacDonald.

“Five years altogether.”

“He was a bachelor, you say?”

“A widower.”

“Have you ever heard where his first wife came from?”

“No, I remember his saying that she was of German extraction, and I have seen her portrait.  She was a very beautiful woman.  She died of typhoid the year before I met him.”

“You don’t associate his past with any particular part of America?”