"(6) That Sir Jefferson Cobb dined every alternate Wednesday with Major Skidding, an old friend of his, and further, that his doctor had ordered him to take more exercise, so that the probabilities were that he would walk home.
"Perhaps I might mention in passing that I included Mrs. Dampier and Sir Jefferson Cobb in my list only provisionally. Had the necessary effect been created before their turn had come they were to have been spared. As things happened, Mrs. Dampier blundered into my scheme when I was dealing with Captain Porter, and had therefore to be taken out of turn, so to speak."
Ruddock waited while the stenographer completed his notes, and then continued:
"I come now to the first of the murders committed on the evening of Wednesday, July 16th. You are to imagine Eldridge sl
