H.M. closed his eyes.
Bert (the policeman) came out and seemed to argue with Dr. Laurier about who carried Sir George. Bert took his head in the cloth and Dr. Laurier took his legs. They carried…
H.M. sat up.
"Even if old Dr. Pierre Laurier had been up to hanky-panky, he couldn't have concealed any blood below the shoulders.
"Then bang! On Sunday night this feller-" H.M. pointed to Martin—"came weaving his way downstairs after a fall off that roof, and he tells me I ought to see 'young' Dr. Laurier if I wanted information about swordsmanship in remembering (hem!) my reincarnation. He mentioned a cut called the 'Low-high.'
"Now upstairs I'd got a book called The Cavaliers, which I'd been readin’. As I distinctly told Masters at the pub on Saturday, it was a book on swordsmanship. The 'Low-high' was a cut by which the trickster dropped down and cut viciously across the backs of both his opponent's legs just above the ankle.-And the only way anybody could have attacked George Fleet would have been round his feet or ankles under that six-inch parapet
"A sword wasn't used. But at the same moment I remembered what else was hangin' on the wall of the study upstairs. You," he glared at Martin, "must have seen for yourself. And I remembered Dr. Laurier in the rocking-chair."
H.M. drew a deep breath.
"Y'see, this wasn't intended to be an impossible crime. Only one big whitewashed lie made it so. A twelve-year-old young 'un had been beaten too much by a father he hated. He was goin' to stalk his father just like a red Indian. Only he was goin' to kill him.
"He knew (he said so) his father was goin' up to that roof to watch the hunt when it came near. George Fleet always did. How did the twelve-year-old get up there? By a door, leadin' to the back garden, and a staircase going straight up there. Could he stalk the old devil, in all the excitement of the hunt without his father seein' him?