“In which you take no stock!”
“I was going to say that you ought to follow it up as far as you can at present.”
“How?” asked Landis quickly.
“Well, to test your theory, in which I take at least limited stock, we ought to reproduce conditions as nearly as possible; lash the cross-bow, hitch up the thread, run it out to the reception-room window, pull it nearly taut and then lower the window, don’t you think so?
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do! I’ll pull the thread from the garden and you can watch inside to see where the arrow goes. We can station the police to keep people from blundering in there and getting shot. Of course it ought to be done at lunch or dinner time, when everybody’s in the dining-room. We don’t want to put our murderer wise.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Landis admitted. “If it works, Miss Mount is as good as convicted.”
Bernard nodded. But Graham shrank a little. The cool eagerness of the younger man to hunt down and hang a woman came home to him as an attitude vividly merciless and inhuman. He looked at his companions with new eyes. Landis sensed his change of manner at once and returned his glance inquiringly. For a moment Graham was at a loss. Then memory came to his rescue and he changed the subject abruptly.
“There’s one incident I meant to tell you,” he began hesitantly. “I did a lot of thinking before I got to sleep last night and I remembered this. It isn’t much more than an impression. But the night Harrison was killed, I thought I heard the sound of running feet outside my door. They were swift, light feet—the sort of muffled patter that’s gone almost before your attention can focus on it.”
“From which end of the hall?” asked Bernard sharply.
“From the far end, I thought, though I couldn’t be sure. They sounded as if they were going toward the main building.”