“I came down here,” said Garvington, opening the door, “and heard the burglar, as I thought he was, prowling about on the other side.  I threw open the door in this way and the man plunged forward to enter.  I fired, and got him in the right arm, for I saw it swinging uselessly by his side as he departed.”

“Was he in a hurry?” asked Darby, rather needlessly.

“He went off like greased lightning.  I didn’t follow, as I thought that others of his gang might be about, but closing the door again I shouted blue murder.  In a few minutes everyone came down, and while I was waiting—­it all passed in a flash, remember, Darby—­I heard a second shot.  Then the servants and my friends came and we ran out, to find the man lying by that shrubbery quite dead.  I turned him over and had just grasped the fact that he was my brother-in-law, when Lady Agnes ran out.  When she learned the news she naturally fainted.  The women carried her back to her room, and we took the body of Pine into the house.  A doctor came along this morning—­for I sent for a doctor as soon as it was dawn—­and said that Pine had been shot through the heart.”

“And who shot him?” asked Darby sagely.

Garvington pointed to the shrubbery.  “Someone was concealed there,” he declared.

“How do you know, that, my lord?”

“My sister, attracted by my shot, jumped out of bed and threw up her window.  She saw the man—­of course she never guessed that he was Pine—­running down the path and saw him fall by the shrubbery when the second shot was fired.”

“Her bedroom is then on this side of the house, my lord?”

“Up there,” said Garvington, pointing directly over the narrow door, which was painted a rich blue color, and looked rather bizarre, set in the puritanic greyness of the walls.  “My own bedroom is further along towards the right.  That is why I heard the footsteps so plainly on this gravel.”  And he stamped hard, while with a wave of his hand he invited the inspector to examine the surroundings.

Darby did so with keen eyes and an alert brain.  The two stood on the west side of the mansion, where it fronted the three-miles distant Abbot’s Wood.  The Manor was a heterogeneous-looking sort of place, suggesting the whims and fancies of many generations, for something was taken away here, and something was taken away there, and this had been altered, while that had been left in its original state, until the house seemed to be made up of all possible architectural styles.  It was a tall building of three stories, although the flattish red-tiled roofs took away somewhat from its height, and spread over an amazing quantity of land.  As Darby thought, it could have housed a regiment, and must have cost something to keep up.  As wind and weather and time had mellowed its incongruous parts into one neutral tint, it looked odd and attractive.  Moss and lichen, ivy and Virginia creeper—­this last flaring in crimson glory—­clothed the massive stone walls with a gracious mantle of natural beauty.  Narrow stone steps, rather chipped, led down from the blue door to the broad, yellow path, which came round the rear of the house and swept down hill in a wide curve, past the miniature shrubbery, right into the bosom of the park.