The murdered man had been laid on an old-fashioned sofa at the end of this double apartment which was furthest from the window.  Rolfe walked slowly over the thick Turkey carpets and rugs with which the floor was covered, glanced at the sofa curiously, and then turned down the sheet from the dead man’s face.

At the time of his death Sir Horace Fewbanks was 58 years of age, but since death the grey bristles had grown so rapidly through his clean-shaven face that he looked much older.  The face showed none of the wonted placidity of death.  The mouth was twisted in an ugly fashion, as though the murdered man had endeavoured to cry for help and had been attacked and killed while doing so.  One of Sir Horace’s arms—­the right one—­was thrust forward diagonally across his breast as if in self-defence, and the hand was tightly clenched.  Rolfe, who had last seen His Honour presiding on the Bench in the full pomp and majesty of law, felt a chill strike his heart at the fell power of death which did not even respect the person of a High Court judge, and had stripped him of every vestige of human dignity in the pangs of a violent end.  The face he had last seen on the Bench full of wisdom and austerity of the law was now distorted into a livid mask in which it was hard to trace any semblance of the features of the dead judge.

Rolfe’s official alertness of mind in the face of a mysterious crime soon reasserted itself, however, and he shook off the feeling of sentiment and proceeded to make a closer examination of the dead body.  As he turned down the sheet to examine the wound which had ended the judge’s life, it slipped from his hand and fell on the floor, revealing that the judge had been laid on the couch just as he had been killed, fully clothed.  He had been shot through the body near the heart, and a large patch of blood had welled from the wound and congealed in his shirt.  One trouser leg was ruffled up, and had caught in the top of the boot.

The corpse presented a repellent spectacle, but Rolfe, who had seen unpleasant sights of various kinds in his career, bent over the body with keen interest, noting these details, with all his professional instincts aroused.  For though Rolfe had not yet risen very high in the police force, he had many of the qualities which make the good detective—­observation, sagacity, and some imagination.  The extraordinary crime which he had been called upon to help unravel presented a baffling mystery which was likely to test the value of these qualities to the utmost.

Rolfe looked steadily at the corpse for some time, impressing a picture of it in every detail on his mental retina.  Struck by an idea, he bent over and touched the patch of blood in the dead man’s breast, then looked at his finger.  There was no stain.  The blood was quite congealed.  Then he tried to unclench the judge’s right hand, but it was rigid.