utiful stranger enjoying herself in
a place so dear to my heart as the museum of which I have been a director
now these many years? Am I a madman, or a destroyer of youth? I love the
young. This inhuman death of one so fair and innocent has whitened my
locks and seared my very heart-strings. I shall never get over it; and
whatever evidence you may have or think you have, of my having handled
bow and arrow in that museum gallery, it must fall before the fact of my
natural incapability to do the thing with which you have charged me. No
act possible to man is more in contradiction to my instincts, than the
wanton or even casual killing of a young girl."

"I believe you."

It was the Inspector who spoke, and the emphasis which he gave to his
words lifted the director's head again into its old self-reliant poise.
But the silence which followed was so weighted with possibilities of
something yet to be said by this portentous holder of secrets, that it
caused the nobly lifted head slowly to droop again and the lips which had
opened impulsively to close.

Were the words coming--the words which might at a stroke pull down the
whole fabric of his life, past, present and to come?

In his excited state of mind he seemed already to hear them. Doom was
in their sound, and the world, once so bright, was growing dark about
him--dark!

Yet how could these men know? And if they did why did they not speak? And
they did not; they did not. There was silence in the air, not words; and
life for him was taking on once more its ancient colors, when sharp and
merry through the heavy quiet there rang out the five clear calls of a
cuckoo clock from some near-by room. One, two, three, four, five! Jolly
reminder of old days! But to the men who listened, the voice of doom
spoke in its gladsome peal, whether the ears which caught it were those
of accuser or accused. Old days were not the days to be rejoiced in at
a moment so perilous to the one and so painful to the others.

With the cessation of the last shrill cry, the Inspector repeated the
phrase:

"I believe you, Mr. Roberts. But how about the woman who was troubling
you with demands you had no wish to grant? Miss Willetts, as you choose
to call her, though you must know that her name is Duclos, was not the
only person in the line of the arrow shot on that day from one gallery to
the other. Perhaps this weapon of destruction was meant for one it failed
to reach. Perhaps--but I have gone f