"When I came to the station I saw the house and my wife liked it. We
asked the landlord whether he would make a few alterations and he
consented. After the alterations had been carried out I executed the
lease and ordered the house to be furnished. A week after the execution
of the lease we moved in. The house is very large."

Here followed a description of the building; but to make matters clear
and short I have copied out the rough pencil sketch which is still on
the record of the case and marked the doors and rooms, as the Major had
done, with letters.

"I do not dine at the mess. I have an early dinner at home with my wife
and retire early. My wife and I sleep in the same bedroom (the room
marked "G" in the plan), and we are generally in bed at about 11 o'clock
at night. The servants all go away to the out-houses which are at a
distance of about 40 yards from the main building, only one Jamadar
(porter) remains in the front verandah. This Jamadar also keeps an eye
on the whole main building, besides I have got a good, faithful watch
dog which I brought out from home. He stays outside with the Jamadar.

"For the first fifteen days we were quite comfortable, then the trouble
began.

"One night before dinner my wife was reading a story, a detective story,
of a particularly interesting nature. There were only a few more pages
left and so we thought that she would finish them before we put out the
reading lamp. We were in the bedroom. But it took her much longer than
she had expected it would, and so it was actually half an hour after
midnight when we put out the big sixteen candle power reading lamp which
stood on a teapoy near the head of the beds. Only a small bedroom lamp