been the only ones made. Singa
Phut, whose watch was found clasped in the dead woman's hand, had been
closely questioned, but had established a perfect _alibi_.

And the testimony as to this came, not from persons of his own
nationality, but from business men and others, whose words could not be
doubted. So, in the opinion of the authorities, he was not worth
considering further. He admitted having left his watch at the shop to
be repaired, some days before the murder, and had not called at the
store since, except on the morning of the crime, and some time after
its discovery, to get his timepiece, which, of course, he was not then
allowed to take.

Darcy had been formally charged with the crime of murder by the police
captain in whose precinct the happening occurred, and, no bail being
permissible in murder cases, he must, perforce, remain locked up until
his indictment and trial. He was transferred from the witness room of
police headquarters, the day of the funeral, to the less pleasant jail,
and put in a cell, as were the other unfortunates of that institution.

Jay Kenneth, Darcy's lawyer, a young member of the bar, but
enthusiastic and a hard worker, had made a formal entry of a plea of
not guilty for his client, when the latter had been arraigned before
the upper court, and had asked for a speedy trial.

And so, after the first few days of wonder and surmise and of
speculation as to whether Darcy or King might have committed the crime,
or perhaps some desperate burglar, the Darcy case was crowded off the
front page of the newspapers to give way to items of more or less local
interest in Colchester.

Up and down the narrow cell paced James Darcy. His head was bowed, but
at times he raised it to look out through the barred door. All his
eyes encountered, though, was the white-washed wall opposite him--a
bare, white and glaring wall that made his eyes burn--a wall that
seemed to shut out hope itself--as if it were not enough that it had
been at the very bottom of Pandora's box.

Up and down, down and up, now pausing to take his hands from their
strained position clasped behind his back that they might grasp the
cold bars of his cell door--slim white hands that had set many a
gleaming jewel in burnished gold or cold, glittering platinum, that it
might grace the person of some sweet woman. And now those white
fingers grasped cold steel, and a keeper, passing up and down on his
half-hourly rounds, wondere