"The funeral's to-day, by the way," said the inspector as he rose and, with a genial "good morning," left the room.
For the next hour Malcolm Sage was engaged in reading the newspaper accounts of the McMurray Mystery, which he had already caused to be pasted up in the current press-cutting book; he gathered little more from them, however, than he already knew.
That afternoon, accompanied by Inspector Carfon, Malcolm Sage motored down to "The Hollows," which lies at the easternmost end of the village of Gorling.
The inspector stopped the car just as it entered the drive. The two men alighted and, turning sharply to the right, walked across the lawn towards an ugly red-brick building, screened from the house by a belt of trees. Malcolm Sage had expressed a wish to see the laboratory first.
It was a strange-looking structure, some fifty feet long by about twenty feet wide, with a door on the further side. In the red-brick wall nearer the house there was nothing to break the monotony except the small wicket through which the professor's meals were passed.
Malcolm Sage twice walked deliberately round the building. In the meantime the inspector had removed the seal from the padlock and opened the door.
"Did you photograph the position of the body?" enquired Malcolm Sage, as they entered.
"I hadn't a photographer handy," said the inspector apologetically, as he closed the door behind him; "but I managed to get a man to photograph the wound."
"Put yourself in the position of the body," said Malcolm Sage.
The inspector walked to the centre of the room, near a highly-polished table, dropped on to the floor and, after a moment's pause, turned and lay on his left side, with right arm outstretched.