le bench and table;
but the face of Fisher in the strong sunlight had a gravity never
seen on it before.

"Before we go any farther," he said, "there is something you ought
to know. You and I have seen some mysterious things and got to the
bottom of them before now; and it's only right that you should get
to the bottom of this one. But in dealing with the death of my uncle
I must begin at the other end from where our old detective yarns
began. I will give you the steps of deduction presently, if you want
to listen to them; but I did not reach the truth of this by steps of
deduction. I will first of all tell you the truth itself, because I
knew the truth from the first. The other cases I approached from the
outside, but in this case I was inside. I myself was the very core
and center of everything."

Something in the speaker's pendent eyelids and grave gray eyes
suddenly shook March to his foundations; and he cried, distractedly,
"I don't understand!" as men do when they fear that they do
understand. There was no sound for a space but the happy chatter of
the birds, and then Horne Fisher said, calmly:

"It was I who killed my uncle. If you particularly want more, it
was I who stole the state papers from him."

"Fisher!" cried his friend in a strangled voice.

"Let me tell you the whole thing before we part," continued the
other, "and let me put it, for the sake of clearness, as we used to
put our old problems. Now there are two things that are puzzling
people about that problem, aren't there? The first is how the
murderer managed to slip off the dead man's coat, when he was
already pinned to the ground with that stone incubus. The other,
which is much smaller and less puzzling, is the fact of the sword
that cut his throat being slightly stained at the point, instead of
a good deal more stained at the edge. Well, I can dispose of the
first question easily. Horne Hewitt took off his own coat before he
was killed. I might say he took off his coat to be killed."

"Do you call that an explanation?" exclaimed March. "The words seem
more meaningless, than the facts."

"Well, let us go on to the other facts," continued Fisher, equably.
"The reason that particular sword is not stained at the edge with
Hewitt's blood is that it was not used to kill Hewitt."

"But the doctor," protested March, "declared distinctly that the
wound was made by that particular sword."

"I beg your pardon," replied Fisher. "He did not decl