The startling point,
however, is the fact that he was _not_ carrying my lord's breakfast to
him, or taking it away from him, but that there is someone else in the
castle for whom he was caterer. Who is that person?'
'I'm blessed if I know,' said the constable, 'but I think you are
wrong there. He may not have been carrying up the breakfast, but he
certainly was taking away the tray, as is shown by the empty dishes,
which you have just a moment ago pointed out.'
'No, constable; when his lordship heard the crash, and sprang
impulsively from his bed, he upset the little table on which had been
placed his own tray; it shot over the oaken chest at the head of the
bed, and if you look between it and the wall you will find tray,
dishes, and the remnants of a breakfast.'
'Well, I'm blessed!' exclaimed the chief constable once again.
'The main point of all this,' I went on calmly, 'is not the disaster
to the butler, nor even the shock to his lordship, but the fact that
the tray the serving man carried brought food to a prisoner, who
probably for six weeks has been without anything to eat.'
'Then,' said the constable, 'he is a dead man.'
'I find it easier,' said I, 'to believe in a living man than in a dead
man's ghost.
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