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"What did Davenant look like?" asked Carmichael suddenly.

"Good Lord," said Reeves, "you ought to remember that well enough. You must have met him down here pretty well every week-end, and he was quite well known."

"Oh yes," explained Carmichael. "I know what he looked like. I'm only asking you to see if you remember. If you were asked in a witness-box, what would you say Davenant looked like?"

"Well," said Reeves, rather taken aback, "I suppose one would certainly say he was very dark. Very dark hair, I mean, and a great deal of it, so that it made the rest of his face rather unnoticeable. What I generally notice about a man is his eyes, and I never got much impression of Davenant's, because he nearly always wore those heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. And then of course he was a rattling good player. If he murdered Brotherhood, as Marryatt seems positive he did, I can tell you one motive that I can't accept for his doing it. He wasn't jealous of Brotherhood's golf. Poor old Brotherhood was about as rotten as Davenant is good."

"It's very extraordinary to me," said Carmichael, "that you should say all that, and yet not have arrived at the obvious fact about this mystery. The root fact, I mean, which you have to take into account before you start investigating the circumstances at all. You simply haven't seen that fact, although it's right under your nose. And that's