"Our reporter has been visiting the scene of the dastardly attempt," he said; "something spicy for the evening papers, Geoff? Oh, by the way, I asked Kimber what he could tell me about that gun of mine. He could tell me a lot. Come in to lunch."
"And what could he tell you?" asked Geoffrey.
Harry looked at the servants a moment.
"Later," he said. "Oh, how I bless the man who invented lunch! Do you remember saying to me once that little things like baths and tea were much more important than anything else?"
"Yes, and you called me a sensuous voluptuary," said Geoffrey.
"I believe I did. So you are. So am I."
The sensuous voluptuaries went out again as soon as lunch was over, to shoot the rough, and as they walked Harry told his friend what he had learned from the keeper.
"I asked him first," he said "(without telling him what had happened), who put those two guns, yours and my uncle's, on the table, and he didn't know. He had come in early to get cartridges and put the guns out, and found them there. So he took the cartridges and went. Now, until this morning, I haven't shot here since last February, and I didn't take the gun that behaved so—so prematurely to-day, to Scotland. So I asked whether any one had used it since I went away, and it appeared that Uncle Francis had several times, for his own gun, the hammerless one which we found on the table, had gone to the maker's to have a rust hole taken out. Do you follow?"
"Perfectly."
"Well, two days ago, the day we came down here, Kimber was feeding the pheasants, and he heard a shot near at hand, and a moment afterward a wounded hare ran across the clearing, followed immediately by Uncle Francis. He was almost crying, said Kimber: do you remember how he wounded a hare last Christmas, and was out for an hour trying to recover it? Well, the same thing had happened, and it was his first shot, remember that; Kimber was certain there had been only one. But this time the hare had run into thick cover, and there was really no chance of getting it, for it had been hit, Kimber saw, only in one leg. Now attend, Geoff, very closely; it's quite a detective story. As they stood there, Kimber saw Uncle Francis take the discharged cartridge case out of the right barrel and slip the unused cartridge from the left into it. Now that bears all the stamp of truth on it. I have seen Uncle Francis do just that a dozen times, when he had killed with his first barrel, and does not immediately expect another shot. To continue. Then he drew another cartridge from his pocket, but suddenly said, 'I can shoot no more with that poor wounded thing unfound.' And he snapped the breech to, and went home. Now do you see?"