ing of red blood.

"_And this?_"

As the picture changed there was a quiver in the pulsating column, a
hesitation with a quick fluttering at the bottom of the stroke, then the
red line shot up full nine inches.

M. Paul glanced at the sheet and saw a perfect reproduction of private room
Number Six in the Ansonia. Everything was there as on the night of the
crime, the delicate yellow hangings, the sofa, the table set for two. And,
slowly, as they looked, two holes appeared in the wall. Then a dim shape
took form upon the floor, more and more distinctly until the dissolving
lens brought a man's body into clear view, a body stretched face downward
in a dark red pool that grew and widened, slowly straining and wetting the
polished wood.

"Groener," said the magistrate, his voice strangely formidable in the
shadows, "do you recognize this room?"

"No," said the prisoner impassively, but the column was pulsing wildly.

"You have been in this room?"

"Never."

"Nor looked through these eyeholes?"

"No."

"Nor seen that man lying on the floor?"

"No."

Now the prisoner's heart was beating evenly again, somehow he had regained
his self-possession.

"You are lying, Groener," accused the judge. "You remember this man
perfectly. Come, we will lift him from the floor and look him in the face,
full in the face. There!" He signaled the lantern operator and there leaped
forth on the sheet the head of Martinez, the murdered, mutilated head with
shattered eye and painted cheeks and the greenish death pallor showing
underneath. A ghastly, leering cadaver in collar and necktie, dressed up
and photographed at the morgue, and now flashed hideously at the prisoner
out of the darkness. Yet Groener's heart pulsed on steadily with only a
slight quickening, with less quickening than Coquenil felt in his own
heart.

"Who is it?" demanded the judge.

"I don't know," declared the accused.

Again the picture changed.

"Who is this?"

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"And this?"

"Prince Bismarck."

"And this?"

"Queen Victoria."

Here, suddenly, at the view of England's peaceful sovereign, Groener seemed
thrown into frightful agitation, not Groener as he sat on the chair, cold
and self-contained, but Groener as revealed by the unsuspected dial. Up and
down in mad excitement leaped the red column with many little breaks and
quiverings at the bottom of the beats and with tremendous up-shootings as
if the frightened heart were tr