Calm yourself, madame," interrupted Kennedy soothingly. "Calm yourself.
What's done is done. The truth must come out. Be calm. Now," he
continued, after the first storm of remorse had spent itself and we were
all outwardly composed again, "we have said nothing whatever of the most
mysterious feature of the case, the firing of the shot. The murderer
could have thrust the weapon into the pocket or the folds of this
coat"--here he drew forth the automobile coat and held it aloft,
displaying the bullet hole--"and he or she (I will not say which) could
have discharged the pistol unseen. By removing and secreting the weapon
afterward one very important piece of evidence would be suppressed.
This person could have used such a cartridge as I have here, made with
smokeless powder, and the coat would have concealed the flash of the
shot very effectively. There would have been no smoke. But neither this
coat nor even a heavy blanket would have deadened the report of the
shot.

"What are we to think of that? Only one thing. I have often wondered
why the thing wasn't done before. In fact I have been waiting for it to
occur. There is an invention that makes it almost possible to strike
a man down with impunity in broad daylight in any place where there is
sufficient noise to cover up a click, a slight 'Pouf!' and the whir of
the bullet in the air.

"I refer to this little device of a Hartford inventor. I place it
over the muzzle of the thirty-two-calibre revolver I have so far been
using--so. Now, Mr. Jameson, if you will sit at that typewriter over
there and write--anything so long as you keep the keys clicking. The
inspector will start that imitation stock-ticker in the corner. Now we
are ready. I cover the pistol with a cloth. I defy anyone in this room
to tell me the exact moment when I discharged the pistol. I could have
shot any of you, and an outsider not in the secret would never have
thought that I was the culprit. To a certain extent I have reproduced
the conditions under which this shooting occurred.

"At once on being sure of this feature of the case I despatched a man to
Hartford to see this inventor. The man obtained from him a complete list
of all the dealers in New York to whom such devices had been sold. The
man also traced every sale of those dealers. He did not actually obtain
the weapon, but if he is working on schedule-time according to agreement
he is at this moment armed with a search-warrant and is ransackin