e recognise me I wondered, in spite of my beard and my
eye-glasses?

"Apparently he did not. I gave him every chance. I thrust my face into
his and on my second visit challenged him, in the eccentric way which
poor old Gathercole had, to test the grey of my beard. For the moment
however, I was satisfied with my brief experiment and after a reasonable
interval I went away, returning to my place off Victoria Street and
waiting till the evening.

"In my observation of the house, whilst I was waiting for Kara to
depart, I had noticed that there were two distinct telephone wires
running down to the roof. I guessed, rather than knew, that one of these
telephones was a private wire and, knowing something of Kara's fear, I
presumed that that wire would lead to a police office, or at any rate
to a guardian of some kind or other. Kara had the same arrangement in
Albania, connecting the palazzo with the gendarme posts at Alesso. This
much Hussein told me.

"That night I made a reconnaissance of the house and saw Kara's window
was lit and at ten minutes past ten I rang the bell and I think it was
then that I applied the test of the beard. Kara was in his room, the
valet told me, and led the way upstairs. I had come prepared to deal
with this valet for I had an especial reason for wishing that he should
not be interrogated by the police. On a plain card I had written the
number he bore in Dartmoor and had added the words, 'I know you, get out
of here quick.'

"As he turned to lead the way upstairs I flung the envelope containing
the card on the table in the hall. In an inside pocket, as near to my
body as I could put them, I had the two candles. How I should use them
both I had already decided. The valet ushered me into Kara's room and
once more I stood in the presence of the man who had killed my girl and
blotted out all that was beautiful in life for me."

There was a breathless silence when he paused. T. X. leaned back in his
chair, his head upon his breast, his arms folded, his eyes watching the
other intently.

The Chief Commissioner, with a heavy frown and pursed lips, sat stroking
his moustache and looking under his shaggy eyebrows at the speaker. The
French police officer, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head
on one side, was taking in every word eagerly. The sallow-faced Russian,
impassive of face, might have been a carved ivory mask. O'Grady,
the American, the stump of a dead cigar between his teeth, shift