"What time was it when you abandoned the hunt?" asked Gimblet.
"It was past midnight. I didn't see that any good could be done by sitting up all night. On the contrary, I thought it important that we should get some sleep while we could, so as to be fresher for the chase when daylight came. At this time of the year it gets light fairly early, so I sent every one to bed, except two of the ghillies, whom I told to row across the loch to Crianan and fetch the doctor and police, which I suppose I ought to have thought of before. Then I went to bed myself."
"And when did Sir David Southern turn up?" asked Gimblet.
"Oh, he appeared soon after we started to beat the policies. I hadn't time then to ask him where he'd been, and he was as keen on catching the murderer as anyone. Of course it never occurred to me to cross-question him."
"Naturally. Please go on with your narrative."
"Well, we slept, to speak for myself, for three or four hours, and then James and Andrew came back with the people I had sent for. And now, Mr. Gimblet, I come to a strange thing, a thing I've been careful not to mention to anyone but you, though I'm afraid it's bound to come out at the trial. When Blanston and I went out of the library, we locked the door behind us, but when I opened it again, to let in the doctor and the police, my uncle's body had been moved."
"Moved? How?" Gimblet repeated after him.
"Oh, not far, but it had been touched by some one, I am ready to swear, though I said nothing about it at the time. When we first found him, he was lying forward on the table with one arm under his head and the other hanging beside him. When I went in for the second time he was sitting sideways in his chair with his head and arm in quite a different place. Instead of being in the middle, on the blotting-pad, they were further to the right, on the bare polished wood."
Gimblet looked at him keenly.
"You are perfectly certain of this?" he said.
"Absolutely. Besides, you can ask Miss Byrne and Blanston. They both saw him as he was at first. And the police and Dr. Duncan can tell you what his position was when they went into the room. I said nothing about it to any of them, because I thought at once that it must be David who had been there."