of red electric wire which he had picked up in
the library that first day before the tragedy had taken place, when Maud
Duggan was showing him over the house. He fingered it idly, and then
showed Mr. Narkom the two pieces spread upon his open palm.

"Not much in that, I'm afraid. Just the ordinary kind of wire which
everyone uses, and with nothing to show any peculiarities," he said,
speaking half to himself and half to the Superintendent. "Both cut with
a sharp knife, obviously. Now, if they mated evenly--and gad! they _do_
mate!" He brought them together and dovetailed the two frayed ends one
against the other until the edges met in a perfectly even line. "That's
a funny thing! A deuced funny thing! But they belong to each other as
much as two twin souls belong. They're one and the same piece. Gad! and
with the photograph of the estimable young woman--it proves it without a
doubt!"

"Proves what, my dear chap?"

Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle testy. The whole affair of that morning
had got upon his nerves. In the first place, he had had to get up too
early after a broken night, and in the second, Cleek hadn't given him
time to digest his meal, and then the whole higgledy-piggledy of Cleek's
words, from which he could make neither head nor tail, served to
irritate him still further.

Cleek laid a hand upon the Superintendent's arm, and spoke in his most
coaxing voice.

"Have patience with me, dear friend, as you have done before, and as you
will have to do again," he said softly. "It isn't that I don't trust
you--haven't I trusted you with life itself before now, and never found
you wanting?--but it is that at present my theories are in somewhat of a
muddle, and it's only keeping my own counsel that's going to help me to
disentangle them."

"I know, I know, old chap," returned the Superintendent, casting aside
his rancour at this apology from the man who was his best friend, with
his usual heartiness. "I'm a slow-thinking old beggar, and somehow your
lightning sketches get the better of my patience. But I'll back you to
unravel the knot every time. Think you've come to the end, then?"

"I fancy so. With a little bit of bold guesswork thrown in to make equal
measure. That must always be reckoned in the bargain, you know. But if I
haven't found the person or persons who have murdered Sir Andrew in that
cold-blooded and diabolically clever manner, then my name's not--Arthur
Deland. And I know as much about the m