"Couldn't "ve happened the way that gentleman said, that's al!! Excuse me, Miss." Inspector Potter removed his cap and mopped his bald head with a large bandana. "Couldn't. Chap with the fingerprint outfit, who's studied such things, says if he'd tried to blot out old tracks with new ones, it would have pressed the snow inside and there'd have been a ridge inside the track that you could have spotted for a mile. He said some other things, too; I don't remember, but I know what they meant. Those tracks are big: number ten boot, and clean, sharp made all around. Clean as a whistle inside, except a little blur where the snow sticks to the instep-fingerprint man says that's all right. Anyway," said the inspector, in explosive summing-up, "'e says there's been no hanky-panky with those tracks. And there you are. Mr. Bohun's off the list. He can take it easy now. He —. My God, what is it?"
Bennett felt his own stiff arms pushing himself up out of the chair; his skin suddenly hot with fear, and his heart beating heavily. The big dining-hall, with Masters black against the light and turning with white eyeballs to stare, had echoed to a certain noise. The noise shook ghostly tinglings from glass on the table. It seemed to travel along the line of portraits and tremble in the Christmas holly; and they knew by instinct that it meant death. That explosion was muffled by more than the old timbers of the White Priory. It was muffled as though a heavy pistol had been held against padding before it had been fired…
In the big vault of the hall Masters spoke involuntarily against the silence.
"'He can take it easy now-' " Masters repeated, as though the words were dragged out of him. "Oh, my God!"
Katharine Bohun screamed. Bennett tried to seize her arm as she ran after Masters to the door; but Inspector Potter's loud-wheezing bulk got in his way. She was ahead of Masters, who was shouting something, when they plunged through the dingy passages in reply to a cry from upstairs.
The broad gallery upstairs, with its strip of red carpet, stretched away in a dusky tunnel to the light of the window at the far end. They saw a little figure there, a gray figure that hesitated before it reached out and pushed open the door of King Charles's room jerkily, as you might prod a dead snake-with the tip of a gold-headed cane. When the door was opened, they could smell smoke. The figure looked inside.
"The fool!" said Maurice Bohun's voice, as thin and shrill as a locust. He slid back and turned his face away.
Bennett caught the girl towards him as she started to run again. Willard and Dr. Wynne had appeared in the hall, and were running towards the room with Masters after them. They stopped only in a pause of banging footsteps at the door; then they disappeared.
She could not speak: she only shook with such a horrible trembling that he thought he could not quiet her, and she turned her face away and tried to jerk free from his grip.
"Listen!" he said rather hoarsely. "Listen! Look at me! I wouldn't lie to, you. I swear I wouldn't lie. If I go down there, and look, and then come back and tell you the truth, will you promise to stay right where you are? Will you?"