He arose with obvious effort, but walked steadily enough. Winter followed with the doctor, and inquired in an undertone--
"Are you sure about the soft-nosed bullet, doctor?"
"Quite," was the answer. "I was in the Tirah campaign, and saw hundreds of such wounds."
Furneaux, too, had something to say to Miss Manning.
"How were you seated during breakfast?" he asked.
She showed him. It was a large room. Two windows looked down the avenue, and three into the garden, with its background of timber and park. Mr. Mortimer Fenley could have commanded both views; his son sat with his back to the park; the girl had faced it.
"I need hardly put it to you, but you saw no one in or near the trees?" said Furneaux.
"Not a soul. I bathe in a little lake below those cedars every morning, and it is an estate order that the men do not go in that direction between eight and nine o'clock. Of course, a keeper might have passed at nine thirty, but it is most unlikely."
"Did you see the artist of whom Mr. Fenley spoke?"
"No. This is the first I have heard of any artist. Bates must have mentioned him while I was with Dr. Stern."
When Farrow arrived at the head of his legion he was just in time to salute his Inspector, who had cycled from Easton after receiving the news left by the chauffeur at the police station. Farrow was bursting with impatience to reveal the discoveries he had made, though resolved to keep locked in his own breast the secret confided by Bates. He was thoroughly nonplussed, therefore, when Winter, after listening in silence to the account of the footprints and scratches on the moss-covered surface of the rock, turned to Hilton Fenley.
"With reference to the rifle which has been mentioned--where is it kept?" he said.
"In my brother's room. He bought it nearly a year ago, when he was planning an expedition to Somaliland."
Fenley signed to the butler, who was standing with the others at a little distance.
"You know the .450 Express which is in the gun rack in Mr. Robert's den?" he said. "Bring it to the Superintendent."
Tomlinson, shaken but dignified, and rather purple of face as the result of the tramp through the trees, went indoors. Soon he came back, and the rich tint had faded again from his complexion.