ying stretched in Digby's room.

"The medical evidence was curious, Mr. Royle, wasn't it?" Edwards
remarked. "That triangular knife ought not to be very difficult to trace.
There surely are not many of them about."

"No," I replied faintly, for the recollection of one which I had seen
only a few days prior to the tragic occurrence--the one with the arms of
the Medici carved upon its hilt, arose vividly before me.

To me, alas! the awful truth was now plain.

My suspicion regarding the culprit had, by the doctor's evidence, become
entirely confirmed.

I set my jaws hard in agony of mind. What was a mystery of London was to
me no longer a mystery!

CHAPTER VI.

THE PIECE OF CONVICTION.

The morning of the tenth of January was one of those of gloom and
darkness which are, on occasions, the blots upon London's reputation.

There seemed no fog, only a heavy, threatening cloud of night fell
suddenly upon the city, and at three o'clock it might have been midnight.
Streets, shops, and offices were lit everywhere, and buses and taxis
compelled to light up, while in the atmosphere was a sulphurous odour
with a black deposit which caused the eyes to smart and the lungs to
irritate.

Londoners know those periods of unpleasant darkness only too well.

I was sitting in my room in Albemarle Street, watching Haines, who was
cleaning a piece of old silver I had bought at an auction on the previous
day. The collecting of old silver is, I may say, my hobby, and the piece
was a very fine old Italian reliquary, about ten inches in height, with
the Sicilian mark of the seventeenth century.

Haines, under my tuition, had become an expert and careful cleaner of
silver, and I was watching and exhorting him to exercise the greatest
care, as the ornamentation was thin, and some of the scrollwork around
the top extremely fragile. It had, according to the inscription at its
base, contained a bone of a certain saint--a local saint of Palermo it
seemed--but the relic had disappeared long ago. Yet the silver case
which, for centuries, had stood upon an altar somewhere, was a really
exquisite piece of the silversmith's art.

Suddenly the telephone-bell rang, and on answering it I heard Phrida's
voice asking--

"I say, Teddy, is that you? Why haven't you been over since Thursday?"

I started, recollecting that I had not been to Cromwell Road since the
afternoon of the inquest--three days ago.

"Dear, do forgive me," I craved.