alentin, "but don't be long. We
must go in and thrash this out in the house."

Ivan lifted the head, and then almost let it drop.

"Why," he gasped, "it's--no, it isn't; it can't be. Do you know this
man, sir?"

"No," said Valentin indifferently; "we had better go inside."

Between them they carried the corpse to a sofa in the study, and then
all made their way to the drawing-room.

The detective sat down at a desk quietly, and even without hesitation;
but his eye was the iron eye of a judge at assize. He made a few rapid
notes upon paper in front of him, and then said shortly: "Is everybody
here?"

"Not Mr. Brayne," said the Duchess of Mont St. Michel, looking round.

"No," said Lord Galloway in a hoarse, harsh voice. "And not Mr. Neil
O'Brien, I fancy. I saw that gentleman walking in the garden when the
corpse was still warm."

"Ivan," said the detective, "go and fetch Commandant O'Brien and Mr.
Brayne. Mr. Brayne, I know, is finishing a cigar in the dining-room;
Commandant O'Brien, I think, is walking up and down the conservatory. I
am not sure."

The faithful attendant flashed from the room, and before anyone could
stir or speak Valentin went on with the same soldierly swiftness of
exposition.

"Everyone here knows that a dead man has been found in the garden, his
head cut clean from his body. Dr. Simon, you have examined it. Do you
think that to cut a man's throat like that would need great force? Or,
perhaps, only a very sharp knife?"

"I should say that it could not be done with a knife at all," said the
pale doctor.

"Have you any thought," resumed Valentin, "of a tool with which it could
be done?"

"Speaking within modern probabilities, I really haven't," said the
doctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not easy to hack a neck through
even clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with a
battle-axe or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword."

"But, good heavens!" cried the Duchess, almost in hysterics, "there
aren't any two-handed swords and battle-axes round here."

Valentin was still busy with the paper in front of him. "Tell me," he
said, still writing rapidly, "could it have been done with a long French
cavalry sabre?"

A low knocking came at the door, which, for some unreasonable reason,
curdled everyone's blood like the knocking in Macbeth. Amid that frozen
silence Dr. Simon managed to say: "A sabre--yes, I suppose it could."

"Thank you," said Valentin.