Till Death Do Us Part

course taken by the already-fired bullet passed just across the top of De Villa's head.

.'And then, just as the first eerie glow of dawn was lighting up this room, he rolled back the sleeve of De Villa's dressing-gown and with gloved hands emptied the hypodermic of prussic acid into his victim's left arm.'

Dr Fell paused.

Despite that warm afternoon, Dick Markham was cold to the heart. He seemed to see shadows moving at dawn, evil shadows in this room: the gloved physician, the corpse that jerked once, the stir of birds outside in the trees.

'He next,' said Dr Fell, 'locked up the room. He could do this, don't you see, because there was now a bullet-hole in the window. We kept talking about this room being 'sealed'. But, by thunder, it wasn't sealed! That's the whole point! De Villa had spoken truly when he remarked that you can't have a sealed room when there's a bullet-hole in the wall.

'Middlesworth took a box of drawing-pins, and spilled it artistically on the floor at the dying man's left hand. He locked and bolted the door on the inside. Finally, he... will you oblige, Hadley?'

Superintendent Hadley nodded with more than a litde grimness. He got up and went out of the room.

'I burbled away on Friday night,' continued Dr Fell, 'with a little discourse on windows. Please observe this particular window and this particular bullet-hole. The bullet-hole - as I face it now - is below the line of the joined sashes, some three inches below and to the left of the metal catch. Very well I

'I take an ordinary drawing-pin, like this one in my hand now. I stick this drawing-pin into the frame of the window - the horizontal frame facing me, marking the line of the joined sashes - above the bullet-hole and a little farther to the left.

' I then take a piece of very heavy black thread, a long piece like this one' - it appeared in conjuring fashion from Dr Fell's capacious side pocket - 'and this I prepare for my trick.'

The figure of Superintendent Hadley appeared outside the window. The lower sill of the window, as Dick had been able to notice before, was not much above the level of a man's waist.

Dr Fell unlocked the window by pushing its metal catch to the right, so that it lay flat back. Folding the long pieces of thread, he fastened its loop round the thumb-grip of the catch. He ran the ends of the thread along to the left and over the drawing-pin, as though over a pulley. Then he ran the ends downwards, threading them both through the opening of the bullet-hole so that they now hung outside the window.

' Since I am of somewhat more than modest dimensions myself,' Dr Fell said apologetically, 'you will excuse me if I don't execute the movement myself. But I raise the window. Like this!'

He pushed up the window, the long loop of thread running with it but its position remaining undisturbed.

' Imagine, now, that I climb out as Middlesworth did. I climb out, I close the window after me' - down it came with a soft bang - 'and I am all ready. I have only to take diose ends of the thread which now hang outside the window, and pull them downwards as Hadley is doing.

' Pressure on that loop of thread, run over the drawing-pin to act as a pulley, pulls the thumb-catch of the window outwards, towards me, moving slowly outwards until it is at right angles; and the window is now locked.

'Once this is done, a very strong downwards jerk on my drawing-pin-pulley dislodges the drawing-pin from the frame; it falls inwards and bounces somewhere on the floor of the room. I pull one of the ends of my loop of thread, so that I draw the thread outside the window like a snake, and have it outside the window in my hand. No trace now remains. The drawing-pin will be found in the room, of course. But it will not be noticed if I have already spilled a box of drawing-pins on the floor. All right, Hadley!'

The window-catch, pulled over by that thread, had slid into the locked position. Hadley, outside the window, gave now a sharp downwards yank. The drawing-pin, pulled loose, fell upon the inside sill, and flew out into the room. It landed on the carpet...

'Not far, you observe,' said Dr Fell, pointing, 'from another drawing-pin which seemed to have rolled wide from the spilled box we found here Friday morning. You perhaps recall I had my eye on it while we were here during the afternoon? Hadley almost stepped on it.'

Hadley, pulling at one end of the thread, was now drawing it outside the window into his hand.

'That's all there was to Middlesworth's dodge,' said Dr Fell.' It takes a few minutes in the telling; but in execution it can be done in thirty seconds. The room was sealed. Middlesworth was now ready for the last, most important thing - to convince you, Mr Markham, that there was no bullet-hole in the window until you arrived.

'He went to the telephone in the hall, and sent that frantic whispering message. It was certain to draw you, and it did. He imagined how long it would take you to leave the house. He dropped a shilling into the electric meter, having left the switch turned on in this room; and a light came on here. He dodged across the lane - some distance eastwards, from the orchard to the coppice, where Miss Drew saw him - and all was ready.

'When you got well in sight, he made a conspicuous clatter with the rifle by rattling it against the wall. He drew your attention to it. As you shouted out to that marksman, he aimed at the window and fired... ?'

'A blank cartridge,' supplied Dick.

'A blank cartridge,' agreed Dr Fell. 'Inspired by Earnshaw's adventure when Major Price played the famous joke, Middlesworth used it to very good advantage.

'Now you yourself, Mr Markham, were utterly convinced you had seen that bullet-hole, as you put it 'jump up' in the window. That was what I had to break down when I questioned you on Friday afternoon. I was perhaps - hurrum! - a little on edge when I questioned you; and, when Hadley interrupted at a critical point, I fear I mentally consigned him to hopeless spiritual ruin.

'But actually you never saw anything of the kind. This became obvious from your own account of the matter. Your actual words to me were, when I pressed you:'I was watching the rifle; I saw it fired; and even at that distance I could make out the bullet-hole in the window.'

''Make out,' yes. But that's a different thing. Naturally you had your eyes on the rifle 1 You saw it fired. Good 1 But to say that you also saw the bullet-hole appear in the window presupposes a turn of the head from left to right faster than the velocity of a rifle-bullet. This was an evident impossibility.

' I breathed, sir, with much relief. When, shortly afterwards, I was presented with Miss Cynthia Drew's story of the man - or figure - she saw running across the road, I seemed to see the case complete. But for Hadley's interruption at a difficult time...'

Superintendent' Hadley, who had come back into the room, stopped short in wrath.

'My interruption?' he repeated.

‘Yes.'

'If it had occurred to you,' said Hadley, 'to tell me just what the devil was the line you were working on before that time, things might have gone a little more smoothly. And aren't you running far ahead of your story?'

Dr Fell's cigar had gone out. He blinked at it, and lumbered back to the sofa, where he sat down.

'There is very little more to tell. If I may be allowed to turn back the clock again, to ten o'clock and onwards on Friday morning, I think we shall finish sweeping up any loose pieces. I was - er - inclined to think, on my first examination of this room just before Hadley's arrival, that I could fathom the lines of the locked room. Hadley arrived, as I told you a while ago, with his information about the identity of the dead man; and my attention was already on Dr Middlesworth.

'Just before I started up for Ashe Hall -'

'Why did you want so much to go up there?' inquired Dick.

'The household,' said Dr Fell, 'had been up most of the night with a sick maid. Somebody might have heard something interesting. Lord Ashe, as I told you, had heard that shot at past midnight While I went on there, I asked Hadley to see whoever was in charge of the village post-office ...'

'And,' snarled Hadley, 'put different marks on any stamps bought by four or five people! I didn't know until late in the afternoon you were definitely after Middlesworth. You might have been after Miss Drew, who was my choice; or Major Price or Mr Earnshaw or even...'

'Me?' asked Lesley quietly. . ' Or even Lord Ashe himself,' said Hadley, smiling at her. ' This trick of laying a trap for the whole ruddy crowd -'

'Well, I might have been wrong,' said Dr Fell, unabashed. 'But everything henceforward told me with roaring