rd," he said, "and get a man up with a bag of tools. We
shall have to pick this lock and I haven't got my case with me."

"Picking the lock would be no good, sir," said Fisher, an interested
spectator, "Mr. Kara's got the latch down."

"I forgot that," said T. X. "Tell him to bring his saw, we'll have to
cut through the panel here."

While they were waiting for the arrival of the police officer T. X.
strove to attract the attention of the inmates of the room, but without
success.

"Does he take opium or anything!" asked Mansus.

Fisher shook his head.

"I've never known him to take any of that kind of stuff," he said.

T. X. made a rapid survey of the other rooms on that floor. The room
next to Kara's was the library, beyond that was a dressing room which,
according to Fisher, Miss Holland had used, and at the farthermost end
of the corridor was the dining room.

Facing the dining room was a small service lift and by its side a
storeroom in which were a number of trunks, including a very large one
smothered in injunctions in three different languages to "handle with
care." There was nothing else of interest on this floor and the upper
and lower floors could wait. In a quarter of an hour the carpenter had
arrived from Scotland Yard, and had bored a hole in the rosewood panel
of Kara's room and was busily applying his slender saw.

Through the hole he cut T. X. could see no more than that the room was
in darkness save for the glow of a blazing fire. He inserted his hand,
groped for the knob of the steel latch, which he had remarked on his
previous visit to the room, lifted it and the door swung open.

"Keep outside, everybody," he ordered.

He felt for the switch of the electric, found it and instantly the room
was flooded with light. The bed was hidden by the open door. T. X. took
one stride into the room and saw enough. Kara was lying half on and half
off the bed. He was quite dead and the blood-stained patch above his
heart told its own story.

T. X. stood looking down at him, saw the frozen horror on the dead man's
face, then drew his eyes away and slowly surveyed the room. There in the
middle of the carpet he found his clue, a bent and twisted little candle
such as you find on children's Christmas trees.

CHAPTER XIV

It was Mansus who found the second candle, a stouter affair. It lay
underneath the bed. The telephone, which stood on a fairly large-sized
table by the side of the bed, was ov