test. I am going to rob you of
some part of your self-satisfaction. Of course I killed Jordan. I killed
him in the very chair in which you are now sitting."

There was a moment's intense silence. The woman was still fanning
herself lazily. Francis leaned forward in his place.

"I do not wish to hear this!" he exclaimed harshly.

"Don't be foolish," his host replied, rising to his feet and strolling
across the room. "You know the whole trouble of the prosecution. They
couldn't discover the weapon, or anything like it, with which the deed
was done. Now I'll show you something ingenious."

Francis followed the other's movements with fascinated eyes. The woman
scarcely turned her head. Hilditch paused at the further end of the
room, where there were a couple of gun cases, some fishing rods and a
bag, of golf clubs. From the latter he extracted a very ordinary-looking
putter, and with it in his hands strolled back to them.

"Do you play golf, Ledsam?" he asked. "What do you think of that?"

Francis took the putter into his hand. It was a very ordinary club,
which had apparently seen a good deal of service, so much, indeed, that
the leather wrapping at the top was commencing to unroll. The maker's
name was on the back of the blade, also the name of the professional
from whom it had been purchased. Francis swung the implement
mechanically with his wrists.

"There seems to be nothing extraordinary about the club," he pronounced.
"It is very much like a cleek I putt with myself."

"Yet it contains a secret which would most certainly have hanged me,"
Oliver Hilditch declared pleasantly. "See!"

He held the shaft firmly in one hand and bent the blade away from it.
In a moment or two it yielded and he commenced to unscrew it. A little
exclamation escaped from Francis' lips. The woman looked on with tired
eyes.

"The join in the steel," Hilditch pointed out, "is so fine as to be
undistinguishable by the naked eye. Yet when the blade comes off, like
this, you see that although the weight is absolutely adjusted, the
inside is hollow. The dagger itself is encased in this cotton wool to
avoid any rattling. I put it away in rather a hurry the last time I used
it, and as you see I forgot to clean it."

Francis staggered back and gripped at the mantelpiece. His eyes were
filled with horror. Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon
some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained
sheath of cotton wo