role," she supplemented. Then, becoming serious again,
"But don't you think it--well, queer, that if this were the instrument
which stabbed Sir Andrew, that there should be no mark of stain upon it,
no blood of any sort? The blade when I found it was absolutely clean."

"H'm. Yes. Rather extraordinary. Unless the murderer had time to wipe it
upon anything, Miss Dowd, before consigning it to the curtains. And now,
another question: What made you keep the thing secret?"

She hesitated a moment, as though uncertain what to answer, then,
blushing faintly, confronted him.

"I have often seen that thing in use in the Duggan household. It has
laid claim to many a theatrical bout upon an impromptu stage. It has cut
pages of books, and slit edges of papers, and----"

"All the more reason why there should have been some significance to
every member of the family in it, Miss Dowd."

"That's one up to you--certainly. But you see the last person I had seen
using it, the day before yesterday, when I was here with Cynthia,
spending the afternoon, was--really, I'd rather not say, Mr. Deland."

"I'm afraid you must, Miss Dowd."

Came a moment's hesitation; meanwhile Cleek watched her narrowly. He saw
the colour come and go in her ivory-tinted face, saw the light that came
into her eyes at mention of the name which followed, and drew his own
immediate conclusions.

"Oh, very well, then. There can be no harm in your knowing. It was Ross
Duggan himself. He had been reading a new book which he had sent to
London for--'Poisons and Potions of Other Times', I think it was
called--and used that very same stiletto to slit the pages with. But
that was a couple of days ago, Mr. Deland. Who used it since, I couldn't
tell. Or how it got in those curtains, either."

"I see. And that's all you have to tell me?"

Cleek's voice was normal, though he was not a little startled at the
news she had imparted to him. Ross, indeed--and reading the musty old
book upon "Poisons and Potions", a replica of which stood upon his own
study bookshelf in his rooms in Clarges Street, and every word of which
he knew by heart! H'm. Strange literature for a young man of normal
tastes. And the thing had been in his possession then. Gad! All roads
began to lead to Rome with a vengeance! And surely Ross Duggan had the
greatest motive for the crime of any one of that strange and unhappy
family. And Sir Andrew had been killed, they said, before the name was
altered i