statement, you'll only be laughed at
for your pains."

"I shall prove it. The murderer's midnight visit, his secret
conference with his victim, did not proceed unwitnessed. His motive is
known, but his act was futile. It came too late."

"This is all very interesting, no doubt, or would be if it could be
credited. However, I cannot understand why you have elected to take me
into your confidence." Rockamore was livid, but he controlled himself
sufficiently to speak with a simulation of contemptuous boredom. "I
came here to see Miss Lawton, in response to an urgent call from her;
I don't know by what authority you are here, but I do know that I do
not propose to be further annoyed by you!"

"I am afraid that you will find yourself very seriously annoyed before
this affair comes to an end, Mr. Rockamore," said Blaine. "Miss
Lawton's butler summoned you this afternoon by my instructions, and
with gratifying promptness you came and did just what I expected you
would do--betrayed yourself irretrievably in your haste to recover the
evidence which now will hang you!"

The other man laughed harshly, a discordant, jarring laugh which
jangled on the tense air.

"Your accusation is too absurd to be resented. I knew that Miss Lawton
herself could not have been a party to this melodramatic hoax!"

Blaine walked to the desk before replying, and taking up the
crimson-tinged vial, weighed it in his hand.

"You did not find the poison bottle which you yourself thrust in that
chair the night Pennington Lawton died, Mr. Rockamore, because his
daughter discovered it and communicated with me," he said. "She
anticipated you by less than twenty-four hours. We have known from the
beginning of your nocturnal visit to this room; every word of your
conversation was overheard. It's no use trying to bluff it; we've got
a clear case against you."

"You and your 'clear case' be d--d!" the other man cried, his tones
shaking with anger. "You're trying to bluff me, my man, but it won't
work! I don't know what the devil you mean about a midnight visit to
Lawton; the last I saw of him was at a directors' meeting the
afternoon before his death."

"Then why has that chair--the chair in which he died--exerted such a
peculiar, sinister influence over you? Why is it that every time you
have entered this room since, you have been unable to keep away from
it? Why, this very hour, when you thought yourself unobserved, did you
walk straight to this cha