"And how do you account for _that_, Mr. Deland?"
"Ah, that is a more difficult matter. How? By whose hand? We will get back to our stage rehearsal for that, I think. Mr. Narkom, would you sit down again in the chair? Thanks very much. It's only just for a moment. Now, if you ladies would take up your positions again as they were, I'd be very much obliged. Let me see. The shot entered the temple here above the left eye and passed clean through the head into the wall of the room beyond. An acute angle of fifty degrees. H'm. That would bring it to about over there and to a level with the top of that wood-panelling. Then the bullet must be located somewhere in that vicinity, from all logical reasonings. But where? Come, Mr. Narkom, just a moment. Lend me your keen eyes, will you? And we'll have a look together. It'll want careful looking, I'll warrant. But the panelling's in fine condition and shows every mark. I-- Gad! and here it is too!"
His finger paused upon a slight, dark puncture in the darkness of the wood, and he whirled round and faced them all, eyes alight, face aglow, and marking the spot with his finger-nail. "Here, lend me your knife, my friend, and we'll dig it out. That will establish a pretty good clue, I can promise you. And a soundless pistol-shot--an air-gun. It ought to be easy to trace the owner of _that_, in desolate parts like this. Well, here goes!"
A moment's careful prodding with the point of the knife, and the thing was done. The bullet--an infinitesimal thing--fell out into the palm of his hand. Then, of a sudden, he swung around in his tracks toward them. His face was grim.
"Look here," he said, in the sharp staccato of excitement, "what I want to know is, who of this company possesses an air-gun? For that someone does I am certain. That shot must have been fired at close range--by the depth to which it was embedded in this wood. Mr. Duggan, do you happen to own an air-pistol?"
The last remnant of colour drained itself out of Ross Duggan's already pale cheeks. His eyes narrowed down to pin-points in the frame of his face. Then his chin went up.
"H'm. I thought as much. And if you were standing there, opposite your father, and with no one at the right side of you, and only the space of the bow-window between you and the outside world--taking into consideration the enormous amount of misguided reason which you might have to commit such a terrible crime--as I said before, if you moved quickly over there, side stepping, so that the shot might miss any of the ladies opposite after passing through Sir Andrew's brain, and--if the lights failed at a given and arranged moment, and you whipped out your revolver and fired, it _might_ bring about just this identical result."
