"What are you waiting for?" asked Sir Walter, impatiently. "Can you
see anything there?"
"Well, yes, in a way," replied the voice, vaguely. "In fact, I see
it quite plain now."
"What is it?" asked Wilson, sharply, from the table on which he sat
kicking his heels restlessly.
"Well, it's a man," said Horne Fisher.
Wilson bounded off the table as if he had been kicked off it. "What
do you mean?" he cried. "How can you possibly see a man?"
"I can see him through the window," replied the secretary, mildly.
"I see him coming across the moor. He's making a bee line across the
open country toward this tower. He evidently means to pay us a
visit. And, considering who it seems to be, perhaps it would be more
polite if we were all at the door to receive him." And in a
leisurely manner the secretary came down the ladder.
"Who it seems to be!" repeated Sir Walter in astonishment.
"Well, I think it's the man you call Prince Michael," observed Mr.
Fisher, airily. "In fact, I'm sure it is. I've seen the police
portraits of him."
There was a dead silence, and Sir Walter's usually steady brain
seemed to go round like a windmill.
"But, hang it all!" he said at last, "even supposing his own
explosion could have thrown him half a mile away, without passing
through any of the windows, and left him alive enough for a country
walk--even then, why the devil should he walk in this direction?
The murderer does not generally revisit the scene of his crime so
rapidly as all that.
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