his supplicating hands toward Holmes and began to plead:
“Don’t, oh, don’t! I never did it; I give my word I never did it. The
way I got this hurt on my forehead was–”
“Arrest him, constable!” cried Holmes. “I will swear out the warrant.”
The constable moved reluctantly forward–hesitated–stopped.
Hillyer broke out with another appeal. “Oh, Archy, don’t let them do it;
it would kill mother! You know how I got the hurt. Tell them, and save
me, Archy; save me!”
Stillman worked his way to the front, and said:
“Yes, I’ll save you. Don’t be afraid.” Then he said to the house,
“Never mind how he got the hurt; it hasn’t anything to do with this case,
and isn’t of any consequence.”
“God bless you, Archy, for a true friend!”
“Hurrah for Archy! Go in, boy, and play ’em a knock-down flush to their
two pair ‘n’ a jack!” shouted the house, pride in their home talent and a
patriotic sentiment of loyalty to it rising suddenly in the public heart
and changing the whole attitude of the situation.
Young Stillman waited for the noise to cease; then he said:
“I will ask Tom Jeffries to stand by that door yonder, and Constable
Harris to stand by the other one here, and not let anybody leave the
room.
“Said and done. Go on, old man!”
“The criminal is present, I believe. I will show him to you before long,
in case I am right in my guess. Now I will tell you all about the
tragedy, from start to finish. The motive wasn’t robbery; it was
revenge. The murderer wasn’t light-witted. He didn’t stand six hundred
and twenty-two feet away. He didn’t get hit with a piece of wood. He
didn’t place the explosive against the cabin. He didn’t bring a shot-bag
with him, and he wasn’t left-handed. With the exception of these errors,
the distinguished guest’s statement of the case is substantially
correct.”
A comfortable laugh rippled over the house; friend nodded to friend, as
much as to say, “That’s the word, with the bark on it. Good lad, good
boy. He ain’t lowering his flag any!”
The guest’s serenity was not disturbed. Stillman resumed:
“I also have some witnesses; and I will presently tell you where you can
find some more.” He held up a piece of coarse wire; the crowd craned
their necks to see. “It has a smooth coating of melted tallow on it.
And here is a candle which is burned half-way down. The remaining half
of it has marks cut upon it an inch apart. Soon I will tell you where I
found these things. I will now put aside reasonings, guesses, the
impressive hitchings of odds and ends of clues together, and the other
showy theatricals of the detective trade, and tell you in a plain,
straightforward way just how this dismal thing happened.”
He paused a moment, for effect–to allow silence and suspense to
intensify and concentrate the house’s interest; then he went on:
“The assassin studied out his plan with a good deal of pains. It was a
good plan, very ingenious, and showed an intelligent mind, not a feeble
one. It was a plan which was well calculated to ward off all suspicion
from its inventor. In the first place, he marked a candle into spaces an
inch apart, and lit it and timed it. He found it took three hours to
burn four inches of it. I tried it myself for half an hour, awhile ago,
up-stairs here, while the inquiry into Flint Buckner’s character and ways
was being conducted in this room, and I arrived in that way at the rate
of a candle’s consumption when sheltered from the wind. Having proved
his trial candle’s rate, he blew it out–I have already shown it to you–
and put his inch-marks on a fresh one.
“He put the fresh one into a tin candlestick. Then at the five-hour mark
he bored a hole through the candle with a red-hot wire. I have already
shown you the wire, with a smooth coat of tallow on it–tallow that had
been melted and had cooled.
“With labor–very hard labor, I should say–he struggled up through the