"Yes, sir, but not so hard as previously, and it stopped altogether before I entered the room, though the wind was blowing."
"That is as I thought. Benson's story is true, Galloway."
"What!" The police officer's vociferous exclamation was in striking contrast to the detective's quiet tones. "How do you make that out?"
"He couldn't have committed the murder. Mr. Glenthorpe was killed during the storm, between eleven and half-past. Benson says he didn't enter the room till nearly half-past eleven."
"If that's all you're going on——"
"It isn't." There was a trace of irritation in the detective's voice. "But Benson's story fills in the gaps of my reconstruction in a remarkable way—so completely, that he couldn't have invented it to save his life, because he does not know all we know. In this extraordinarily complicated case the times are everything. My original theory was right. There were two persons in the room the night of the murder—three, really, but Peggy doesn't affect the reconstruction one way or the other. The murderer, who carried an umbrella to shield himself from the rain, entered the room about twenty past eleven. He murdered Mr. Glenthorpe, took the money, and escaped the same way he entered—by the window. Benson entered by the door at half-past eleven, certainly not later, and after standing at the bedside for two or three minutes, rushed downstairs, as he related, leaving his candle burning at the bedside. During his absence downstairs his daughter entered the room. Benson returned for the candle and found it gone. Had he returned a minute or two earlier he would have seen his daughter carrying it away, because in her story to me she said she thought she heard somebody creeping up the stairs as she left the room. I thought at the time that she imagined this, but now I have very little doubt that it was her father she heard, going upstairs again to get the candle. Finally, Benson, after planning it with Charles, removed the body to the pit some time after midnight."
"This is mere guess-work. Let us stick to facts. On Benson's own confession he entered the room nefariously and removed the dead man's body."
"Yes, but it was a dead body when he got there—just dead. Mr. Glenthorpe was alive and well not ten minutes before."
"Oh, come, Mr. Colwyn, this is going too far," Galloway expostulated. "Again, I say, let us have no guess-work."
"This is not guess-work. There can be no doubt that the murderer left the room by the window just before Benson entered it by the door."