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."

"He doesn't know yet that it is the scene of his crime," answered
Horne Fisher.

"What on earth do you mean? You credit him with rather singular
absence of mind."

"Well, the truth is, it isn't the scene of his crime," said Fisher,
and went and looked out of the window.

There was another silence, and then Sir Walter said, quietly: "What
sort of notion have you really got in your head, Fisher? Have you
developed a new theory about how this fellow escaped out of the ring
round him?"

"He never escaped at all," answered the man at the window, without
turning round. "He never escaped out of the ring because he was
never inside the ring. He was not in this tower at all, at least not
when we were surrounding it."

He turned and leaned back against the window, but, in spite of his
usual listless manner, they almost fancied that the face in shadow