right when it
began to wobble, I suppose. Anyhow, it was always stuck in the
stonework there; and I suppose it came out when the thing
collapsed."

Doctor Prince nodded, but he continued to look down at the pools of
blood and the bar of iron.

"I'm certain there's something more underneath all this," he said at
last. "Perhaps something more underneath the statue. I have a huge
sort of hunch that there is. We are four men now and between us we
can lift that great tombstone there."

They all bent their strength to the business; there was a silence
save for heavy breathing; and then, after an instant of the
tottering and staggering of eight legs, the great carven column of
rock was rolled away, and the body lying in its shirt and trousers
was fully revealed. The spectacles of Doctor Prince seemed almost to
enlarge with a restrained radiance like great eyes; for other things
were revealed also. One was that the unfortunate Hewitt had a deep
gash across the jugular, which the triumphant doctor instantly
identified as having been made with a sharp steel edge like a razor.
The other was that immediately under the bank lay littered three
shining scraps of steel, each nearly a foot long, one pointed and
another fitted into a gorgeously jeweled hilt or handle. It was
evidently a sort of long Oriental knife, long enough to be called a
sword, but with a curious wavy edge; and there was a touch or two of
blood on the point.

"I should have expected more blood, hardly on the point," observed
Doctor Prince, thoughtfully, "but this is certainly the instrument.
The slash was certainly made with a weapon shaped like this, and
probably the slashing of the pocket as well. I suppose the brute
threw in the statue, by way of giving him a public funeral."

March did not answer; he was mesmerized by the strange stones that
glittered on the strange sword hilt; and their possible significance
was broadening upon him like a dreadful dawn. It was a curious
Asiatic weapon. He knew what name was connected in his memory with
curious Asiatic weapons. Lord James spoke his secret thought for
him, and yet it startled him like an irrelevance.

"Where is the Prime Minister?" Herries had cried, suddenly, and
somehow like the bark of a dog at some discovery.

Doctor Prince turned on him his goggles and his grim face; and it
was grimmer than ever.

"I cannot find him anywhere," he said. "I looked for him at once,
as soon as I found the papers wer