which
Carroll held for him. The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves and
stooped down. "Head's badly cut--let's see what we have here. Let's
have a light, it's too dark to see."

One of the clerks switched on more electric lights, and they glinted
and sparkled on the silver and cut glass. They flashed on the white,
still face, and the gleams seemed to be swallowed up in that red blotch
in the snowy hair.

"Um, yes! Depressed fracture. Bad place, too. Shouldn't wonder but
what it had done the trick. Might have been from a black-jack?" and he
glanced questioningly at the detectives.

Carroll shook his head in negation.

"That'll crack a skull, but it won't draw blood--not if it's used
right," and he brought from his hip pocket one of the weapons in
question--a short, stout flexible reed, covered with leather, the end
forming a pocket in which was a chunk of lead.

"I'll gamble it wasn't one of _them_," said Carroll.

"Maybe not," assented the doctor. "Let's look a bit further."

He glanced at the floor about the body, peered around the edge of a
showcase, underneath which there was a space for refuse--odds and ends,
discarded wrapping paper and the like--a place into which neither of
the detectives had, as yet, glanced. Dr. Warren uttered an
exclamation, and drew out a metal statue, about two feet high.

It was that of a hunter, standing as though he had just delivered a
shot, and was peering to see the effect. The butt of his gun projected
behind him, and as Dr. Warren moved the statue into the light of the
jewelry store chandeliers, they all saw, clinging to the stock of the
gun, some straggling, white hairs.

"That's what did it!" exclaimed the county physician. "I'll wager,
when I try, I can fit that gun butt into the depression of the
fracture. The burglar--or whoever it was--swung this statue as a club.
It would make a deadly one, using the foot end for a handle," and Dr.
Warren waved the ornament in the air over the dead woman's head to
illustrate what he meant.

"Don't!" muttered Darcy in a strained voice.

"Don't what?" asked the physician sharply.

"Use the statue that way."

"Why not?"

"Well--er--I--we were going to buy it for our new home. But now--
Oh, I never want to see it in the house! I couldn't bear to look at
it--nor could she!"

"She? We? What do you mean?" asked Carroll quickly. "Say, do you
know something about this killing that you're keeping back from us?"

He