?" asked Valentin.

"I'll show you," said his servant, and reappeared with a flashing naked
cavalry sabre, streaked with blood about the point and edge. Everyone in
the room eyed it as if it were a thunderbolt; but the experienced Ivan
went on quite quietly:

"I found this," he said, "flung among the bushes fifty yards up the road
to Paris. In other words, I found it just where your respectable Mr.
Brayne threw it when he ran away."

There was again a silence, but of a new sort. Valentin took the sabre,
examined it, reflected with unaffected concentration of thought, and
then turned a respectful face to O'Brien. "Commandant," he said, "we
trust you will always produce this weapon if it is wanted for police
examination. Meanwhile," he added, slapping the steel back in the
ringing scabbard, "let me return you your sword."

At the military symbolism of the action the audience could hardly
refrain from applause.

For Neil O'Brien, indeed, that gesture was the turning-point of
existence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again
in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien
had fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord
Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret
was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhaps
given him something better than an apology, as they drifted among the
old flowerbeds before breakfast. The whole company was more lighthearted
and humane, for though the riddle of the death remained, the load of
suspicion was lifted off them all, and sent flying off to Paris with the
strange millionaire--a man they hardly knew. The devil was cast out of
the house--he had cast himself out.

Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw himself on a garden
seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumed
it. He did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts were on
pleasanter things.

"I can't say it interests me much," said the Irishman frankly,
"especially as it seems pretty plain now. Apparently Brayne hated this
stranger for some reason; lured him into the garden, and killed him with
my sword. Then he fled to the city, tossing the sword away as he went.
By the way, Ivan tells me the dead man had a Yankee dollar in his
pocket. So he was a countryman of Brayne's, and that seems to clinch it.
I don't see any difficulties about the business."

"There are five colossa