The storage room was entered first as upon the earlier visit, but Ashton-Kirk wasted but little time upon it.  In the front room, however, he examined things with a minuteness that amazed Pendleton.  And yet everything was done quickly; like a keen-nosed hound, the investigator went from one object to another; nothing seemed to escape him, nothing was too small for his attention.  One of the first things that he did was to get a chair and plant it against the lettered door that led directly into the hall.  At the top was a gong with a spring-hammer, one of the sort that rings its warning whenever the door is opened; and this the investigator examined with care.

He then passed into the railed space where the body had lain and where the darkened trail of blood still bore ghastly testimony to what had occurred.  The man’s singular eyes scanned the floor, the walls, the flat-topped desk.  On this last his attention again became riveted; and once more Pendleton heard his breath drawn sharply between his teeth.

“When Hume was struck upon the head,” said Ashton-Kirk, after a moment, “he was standing at this desk.  He had just sprung up, probably upon hearing a sound of some kind.  See where the chair is pushed back against the wall, just as he would have pushed it had he arisen hastily.  When he struck he fell across the desk.”  He pointed to a dark trickle of blood down the back of the piece of furniture in question.  “That is the result of the blow upon the head, and probably flowed from the mouth or nostrils.  After the first senseless lurch the body settled back and slid to the position in which it was found.  Here is a blotting pad, a small pair of shears, a box of clips and a letter scale upon the floor where the sliding body dragged them.  The top of the desk is of polished wood; it is perfectly smooth; there are no crevices or anything of the sort to catch hold of anything.  When the body slipped from it, it must have swept everything with it, cleanly.  And yet,” bending forward over the desk and picking up a minute red particle, “here, directly in the center, we find this.”

“What is it?” asked Pendleton, eagerly.

Ashton-Kirk placed the red particle on his palm and held it out.  It was shaped like a keystone, and had apparently been cut from something that had been printed upon.

“It is that portion of a railroad ticket which a conductor’s punch bites out, and which litters the floor and the seats in trains.  Have you never had one fall from your clothes after a railroad journey?”

Pendleton looked at the tiny red fragment, and then at the desk.

“If Hume fell across the desk, as you’ve just said,” he remarked, slowly, “and pulled all these other things to the floor with him—­why, Kirk, this bit of card, in the very center of the polished top,—­it must have dropped there afterwards.”

“Exactly,” said Ashton-Kirk.  “And now, if you don’t mind, just step out into the hall and ask Paulson to come up.”