ore about them. But here's the room at last. Still on duty,
I see, Hammond." This to the plain-clothes officer before the door of
the death chamber. "Yes, going in; thanks. Come along, Headland."

Then the improvised door opened, closed again, and Cleek and the
superintendent stood in the presence of it--the silent, immutable It
which yesterday had been a living woman. Cleek went over and looked at
the quiet figure, particularly at the wounds on the arms, both of them
close to the shoulder, and immediately below the larger, muscle, then
turned and looked round the room. It was richly appointed, indeed, the
suite had been especially fitted up for her Grace's occupancy, and was,
as might have been expected in such a house, in extremely good taste
from the rich, dull-coloured Indian carpet to the French paper on the
walls. This was a striped paper in two tones of white, one glazed
slightly, the other dull, like two ribbons--a white velvet and a white
silk one--drawn straight down over its surface from ceiling to floor at
regular distances of half a yard apart. He admired that paper, and it
interested him!

"Here, you see, old chap, not a possibility of anybody getting in or out
save by the door which we ourselves have just entered," said Narkom,
opening one door which led into a dressing-room, another leading to a
spacious and richly appointed sitting-room, and a third which gave
access to a porcelain bath set in a marble-floored, marble-walled
apartment lighted and aired by a window of painted glass. "All windows
and all doors locked on the inside when the body was found, and
everything as you see it now; no furniture upset, no sign of a struggle.
There is the bell-rope that was cut; there the noose that was made from
it; and there on the dressing-table the bedroom candles that were found
burning just as the maid left them when she went out and met the young
duke coming up the stairs."

Cleek walked over and looked at the candles.

"If I remember correctly, Mr. Narkom," he said, "I believe you told me
that her Grace retired to this room at half-past eleven, and that
something like twelve or fifteen minutes later the young duke came up
for the purpose of speaking to her. That would make it somewhere in the
close neighbourhood of a quarter to twelve when the maid left her
mistress; and it was three o'clock in the morning, was it not, when the
murder was discovered? Hum-m-m! Singular, most singular, amazingly so!"

"Wha