Started to insist I take the things back or something like that." "That course of action never occurred to you yourself?" "Good Lord no! That would have been fatal; it would have landed me in no end of a row. No, we three just chucked the stuff on the fire and poured it down the Lou and that was that. No harm done." "You say that, Mr. Chapman, but it's quite possible that harm was done." "How can it have been, If the stuff was chucked away as I tell you?" "Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Chapman, that someone might have seen where you put those things, or found them perhaps, and that someone might have emptied morphia out of the bottle and replaced it with something else?" "Good Lord no!" Nigel stared at him. "I never thought of anything of that kind. I don't believe it." "But it's a possibility, Mr. Chapman." "But nobody could possibly have known." "I should say," said the Inspector, drily, "that in a place of this kind a great deal more is known than you yourself might believe possible." "Snooping, you mean?" "Yes." "Perhaps you're right there." "Which of the students might normally, at any time, be in your room?" "Well, I share it with Len Bateson. Most of the men here have been in it now and again. Not the girls, of course. The girls aren't supposed to come to the bedroom floors on our side of the house.

Propriety. Pure living." "They're not supposed to, but they might do so, I suppose?" "Anyone might," said Niel. "In the daytime.

The afternoon, for instance, there's nobody about." "Does Miss Lane ever come to your room?" "I hope you don't mean that the way it sounds, Inspector. Pat comes to my room sometimes to replace some socks she's been daming. Nothing more than that." "You do realise, Mr. Chapman, that the person who could most easily have taken some of that poison out of the bottle and substituted something else for it, was yourself?" Nigel looked at hird, his face suddenly hard and ha gard.

"Yes," he said. "I've seen that just a minute and a half ago. I could have done just exactly that. But I'd no reason on earth for putting that girl out of the way, Inspector, and I didn't do it. Still, there it is-I quite realise that you've only got my word for it." THE STORY of the bet and the disposal of the poison was confirmed by Len Bateson and by Colin Mcationabb. Sharpe retained Colin Mcationabb after the others had gone.

"I don't want to cause you more pain than I can help, Mr. Mcationabb," he said. "I can realize what it means to you for your fianc6e to have been poisoned on the very night of your engagement." "There'll be no need to go into that aspect of it," said Colin Mcationabb, his face immovable.

"You'll not need to concern yourself with my feelings. Just ask me any questions you like which you think may be useful to you." "It was your considered opinion that Celia Austin's behaviour had a psychological origin?" "There's no doubt about it at all,- said Colin Meationabb. "If you'd like me to go into the theory of the thing . . ." "No, no," said Inspector Sharpe, hastily.