truth. He didn't see a dead body lying on the steps of this house;
and he didn't see a man running away.'

"Sir Henry broke in at that. 'Impossible,' he said; 'Millson's a
first-class inspector, absolutely reliable. Why do you say that he
didn't see the dead man on the steps or the assassin running away?'

"Mr. Meadows answered in the same even voice. 'Because there was never
any dead man here,' he said, 'for anybody to see. And because Millson's
'description of the man he saw is scientifically an impossible feat of
vision.'

"Impossible?' cried Sir Henry.

"'Quite impossible,' Mr. Meadows insisted. 'Millson tells us that the
man he saw running away in the night wore a blue coat and reddish-brown
trousers. He says he was barely able to distinguish the blue coat, but
that he could see the reddish-brown trousers very clearly. Now, as a
matter of fact, it has been very accurately determined that red is the
hardest color to distinguish at night, and blue the very easiest. A
blue coat would be clearly visible long after reddish-brown trousers had
become indistinguishable in the darkness.'

"Sir Henry's under jaw sagged a little. 'Why, yes,' he said, 'that's
true; that's precisely true. Gross, at the University of Gratz,
determined that by experiment in 1912. I never thought about it!'

"'There are some other things here that you have not, perhaps, precisely
thought about,' Mr. Meadows went on.

"'For example, the things that happened in this room did not happen in
the night. They happened in the day.'

"He pointed to the half-burned wax candle on the table. 'There's a
headless joiner's nail driven into the table,' he said, 'and this candle
is set down over the nail. That means that the person who placed it
there wished it to remain there--to remain there firmly. He didn't put
it down there for the brief requirements of a passing tragedy, he put it
there to remain; that's one thing.

"'Another thing is that this candle thus firmly fastened on the table
was never alight there. If it had ever been burning in its position on
the table, some of the drops of melted wax would have fallen about it.

"'You will observe that, while the candle is firmly fixed, it does not
set straight; it is inclined at least ten degrees out of perpendicular.
In that position it couldn't have burned for a moment without dripping
melted wax on the table. And there's none on the table; there has never
been any on it. Your glass shows not the