"You can give me no explanation, then, as to your uncle's absence to-night?"
"None at all. I can only say what I told you before—that I expected to find him here on my return."
"Was he here when you left this morning?"
"I believe so," Ruth assured him. "He very seldom comes out of his room until the middle of the day, and he does not like my going to him there. As we started very early, I did not disturb him."
"Have you any objection," the inspector asked, "to telling me where you have spent the whole of to-day?"
"Not the slightest," Arnold interposed. "We have been to Bourne End, and to a village in the neighborhood."
The inspector nodded thoughtfully. Ruth leaned a little forward in her chair. Her voice trembled with anxiety.
"Please tell me," she begged, "what is the charge against my uncle?"
The inspector glanced over his shoulder at that inner room, from which fitful gleams of light still came. He looked down at the heap of pistols and ammunition by his side.
"The charge," he said slowly, "is of a somewhat serious nature."