“Didn’t you see anything?”
I then lost my temper.
“No,” I shouted. “I neither smelt anything in the dark nor saw anything in the light, except that red lunatic charging at me.”
“He was only preserving his illusion,” Tarlyon said mildly. “Didn’t you see, in that second of light, the open desk just by us, beside the door?”
“I saw nothing but Antony, but quite enough of him.”
“Pity. If you had seen the desk, you would have seen a telephone overturned on it, the receiver hanging down, and a revolver on the floor.”
This was getting serious. I struck a match and examined Tarlyon’s face. He was not smiling.
“Fact,” he assured me. “You would have seen the desk just as it was after Roger Poole had shot himself at it.”
“You don’t mean——”
“I mean, old boy, that Antony has gone and put everything back exactly as he last saw it in Roger’s library. Roger, Roger’s wife, Antony and another fellow were in the dining-room. The telephone-bell rang in the library and Roger went to answer it, telling Antony to come with him. He didn’t turn on the light in the library. The telephone told Roger that the police were after him. And the two in the dining-room heard Roger telling Antony what he thought of him as a man and brother, then they heard a shot; and when they got to the door and switched on the light, they saw Roger dead at the desk and Antony standing where he was standing to-night. Antony went out by the window into the garden—and he has reconstructed the scene exactly as he last saw it, even to a dummy telephone and a revolver! In fact, everything is there except Roger. Silly, isn’t it?”