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 CHAPTER XXIX A LEE-ENFIELD RIFLE

HAT reply I should have offered to this astonishing remark I cannot say, but at that moment the library door burst open unceremoniously, and outlined against the warmly illuminated hall, where sunlight poured down through the dome, I beheld the figure of Inspector Aylesbury.

“Ah!” he cried, loudly, “so you have come back, Mr. Harley? I thought you had thrown up the case.”

“Did you?” said Harley, smilingly. “No, I am still persevering in my ineffectual way.”

“Oh, I see. And have you quite convinced yourself that Colin Camber is innocent?”

“In one or two particulars my evidence remains incomplete.”

“Oh, in one or two particulars, eh? But generally speaking you don’t doubt his innocence?”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

Harley’s words surprised me. I recognized, of course, that he might merely be bluffing the Inspector, but it was totally alien to his character to score a rhetorical success at the expense of what he knew to be the truth; and so sure was I of the accuracy of my deductions that I no longer doubted Colin Camber to be the guilty man.

“At any rate,” continued the Inspector, “he is in detention, and likely to remain there. If you are going