the doctor's question was quietly put.

"Have you any notion what became of the murderer?"

"It's a queer business," admitted the inspector, frowning. "I wish I
could begin to learn something of the capabilities of these people.
There must have been three hundred about the platform and the stairs.
And we can't dig up a clue to save ourselves."

"No theory yet?"

"What theory can there be? You see the material as well as I. A corpse,
a knife, and an empty shrine. It's a clear get-away, without a witness."

"Quite so. But aren't you forgetting this witness?"

* * * * *

The doctor laid a finger on the image of the Buddha. There it sat behind
the taper and the offerings and the veiling vapor of the incense. There
it sat cross-legged in its niche, with the left hand lying palm upward
in the lap and the right hanging over the knee--with the calm and
passionless and inscrutable regard of the tradition--a life-size image,
whose painted garments in gilt and old rose, whose set and peaceful
features had been dimmed to a uniform human tint. A very ordinary
image....

At least so it seemed to the bewildered inspector. Until he saw it sag a
trifle. Until he saw it give flaccidly under the doctor's touch. And
then he saw that the actual image had been displaced and jammed back
into the niche for a support and that this--this was a substitute.

"Dead!" he breathed.

The doctor dropped the wrist he had been thumbing.

"Dead," he affirmed rather shakily. "And not only dead, but cold!...
Inspector, I'm not a fanciful man, would you say? I'm not one to believe
much in deviations from the normal--in aberrations from the positive,
eh?--even under the Temple of the Slanted Beam. But I'd swear in any
court--west of Suez, I mean--I'd take my solemn oath the fellow was dead
when he climbed to that altar!... It's the plain evidence. It's as
certain as anything I know, if I know anything.... Dead?... He was dead
the first of the two! He was obliterated, wiped out, blasted out of
existence, _a full five minutes before he ever killed that white chap
there on the floor_!"

"Capabilities," stammered the inspector. "Would you call that suspended
animation, now--or what?"

"I'd call it suspended extinction, if there were such a thing in medical
science. As it is, I'll call it suspended judgment and let it go at
that."

They stayed staring at Moung Poh Sin for a while.

"'There are more things 'twixt'-