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She freed herself quietly from his arm, and spoke over her shoulder

"Perhaps," she said; and then swiftly passed out of the little glade, leaving John standing there as though he had been turned to stone

Rather ostentatiously, I stepped forward, crackling some dead branches with ranted that I had only just cos Have you seen the little fellow safely back to his cottage? Quaint little chap! Is he any good, though, really?"

"He was considered one of the finest detectives of his day"

"Oh, well, I suppose therein it, then What a rotten world it is, though!"

"You find it so?" I asked

"Good Lord, yes! There's this terrible business to start with Scotland Yard men in and out of the house like a jack-in-the-box! Never knohere they won't turn up next Screa headlines in every paper in the country--damn all journalists, I say! Do you know there was a whole crowd staring in at the lodge gates thisSort of Madame Tussaud's cha Pretty thick, isn't it?"

"Cheer up, John!" I said soothingly "It can't last for ever"

"Can't it, though? It can last long enough for us never to be able to hold up our heads again"

"No, no, you're getting h to make a man morbid, to be stalked by beastly journalists and stared at by gaping oes! But there's worse than that"

"What?"

John lowered his voice: "Have you ever thought, Hastings--it's a night sometimes it must have been an accident Because--because--who could have done it? Now Inglethorp's out of the way, there's no one else; no one, I hth for any man! One of us? Yes, surely it ested itself to ht increased Poirot's s, his hints--they all fitted in Fool that I was not to have thought of this possibility before, and what a relief for us all

"No, John," I said, "it isn't one of us How could it be?"

"I know, but, still, who else is there?"

"Can't you guess?"

"No"