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he rummaged over the sprays of wilted beech and finally produced quite a big one, almost a small branch, and held it up, apparently to admire it. But do what he would, he could make no further play with this distraction and after a moment consented to be led back to the dining room, still, however, absent-mindedly switching at his boots with the branchlet that he had acquired and evidently hardly knew he still retained. However, as he went up the steps he did drop it beside them. He would certainly have lost some of his gains with Jane if he had brought beech mast and leafage onto her glossy floors and velvety rugs.
    â€œNow,” said the inspector like an impatient lecturer when he had us ranged at the window, “please stay here and watch carefully that small piece of the top of the door which you can see from here.” With that he left us. A moment after, we heard him, though hidden, calling to us from the door’s direction, “Watch!” And as we watched, the top of the door moved some six inches or more out from shadow into light. But I heard no whine of the catch.
    When he rejoined us, Mr. M. said, “That was very neat.”
    The other took it with a certain half-ashamed modesty. “You’ve had time to enjoy some of the modern painting?”
    Again that almost resentful assent. “Yes, it does help us to discount the senses, doesn’t it? As Constable said, ‘What do we see but light falling on light.’” And Mr. M. sighed a trifle histrionically, I thought, as he added, “And shadows passing through shadows.”
    I am glad this kind of high-flown enigmatism seemed to fail to buoy up our inspector about the same time that my patience was thinning, and when I said almost a little sharply, “What is this all about?” Mr. M. condescended quite quickly with, “Of course, the door didn’t open at all. All that was done just now was to move a branch, which let a highlight of sunbeam fall upon the upper part of the door, which made the effect as though the top of the door itself had actually moved out from shadow into sunlight—in other words, had opened.”
    The inspector nodded and went on, “As the door never opened, no one entered by it. The garden therefore was completely closed, no one was in it, and so the only person who could have killed Sankey was himself. We have the motive, too, which the other alternative—murder—would have left really no more than a piece of fanciful construction. I’ve had the routine inquiries made as to undesirable tramps. There’s nothing to give us any clue there. You know that most tramps are known more or less to the police and most of them are fairly harmless—as far from the killer type as is a slug. For the other case—suicide I have on the contrary been able to get clear confirmation. Sankey was melancholic. I have seen his doctor: growing irritability—you’ve gathered that from the maid; influenza this spring and its after-depression lasting on acutely. That’s the general condition or state of likelihood. Have we any evidence, though, of any momentary provocation that might have sprung the mine of loaded self-disgust?”
    The inspector certainly liked a phrase and I was tickled by his attempt at eloquence. But I was even more pleased when, adding, “Now, for further specific proof,” he moved across to a desk and from one of its drawers took out a finely bound book. It was a delight to the eye. He held it up for us to study. I saw at once it was the beautiful Nonpareil edition of classical texts bound in pigskin and printed on esparto grass paper in that press’s fine font—a treasure indeed, and a lovely addition to the decor of any room even if you never opened it. Across its broad handsome back, in finely stamped gold letters that were miniatures of the Trajan Column inscription capitals, one could read with ease the title: Suetonius: The