"Not a bit," said Nancy, "thanks to you and Colin. I only wish I could tell you how grateful I am for all you've done for me."
Marsden shook his head. "It's very good of you to say so, miss, but I'm not throwing any bouquets at myself this journey. On the contrary, I don't think I've ever made so many blunders in a case in the whole of my professional career."
"Why, what are you worrying about?" demanded Colin. "Except for the regrettable fact that we can't hang Cooper——"
"You haven't heard my news yet," interrupted Marsden. "I'm almost ashamed to confess it, but the fact remains that we've allowed Medwin to slip through our fingers."
Colin stared at him incredulously. "Medwin escaped!" he exclaimed.
"If you like to put it that way. He has escaped being sent for trial, anyhow. At the present moment he's lying in the mortuary at the Kensington Police Station."
With a faint cry of horror Nancy caught hold of Colin's hand.
"It was all my fault," continued Marsden. "I ought to have made certain of him before we left London. It never occurred to me he'd play us a dirty trick like this."
"What do you mean?" broke in Colin. "When I left him he was tied up on the sofa. How on earth——"
"Well, the servants came back and untied him," said Marsden curtly. "He invented some cock-and-bull story about having been attacked by a couple of burglars, and then sent them down to the kitchen and locked himself in his study. As soon as I got back to London I telephoned through to Kensington and gave instructions for his arrest, but by that time it was too late. They found him sitting dead in his chair, with a letter which he had just written lying on the table beside him. He had swallowed enough poison to kill half a dozen people."