Silva spoke to his servant, holding up the cord.  The latter glanced at it and shook his head.  Without a word, Silva handed the cord back to the coroner.

“Are there any further questions?” he asked.

Goldberger pulled at his moustache impatiently.

“There are a lot of questions I’d like to ask,” he said, “but I feel a good deal as though I were questioning the Sphinx.  Isn’t it a little queer that a Thug should be so particular about a few blood-stains?”

“I fear that you are doing Mahbub an injustice in your thoughts,” Silva said, gravely.  “You have heard certain tales of the Thugs, perhaps—­tales distorted and magnified and untrue.  In the old days, as worshippers of Kali, they did, sometimes, offer her a human sacrifice; but that was long ago.  To say a man is a Thug is not to say he is also a murderer.”

“It will take more than that to convict him, anyway,” assented Goldberger, quickly.  “That is all for the present, professor.”  I bit back a smile at the title which came so unconsciously from Goldberger’s lips.

Silva bowed and walked slowly away toward the house, Mahbub following close behind.  At a look from Simmonds, two of his men strolled after the strange couple.

Goldberger stared musingly after them for a moment, then shook his head impatiently, and turned back to the business in hand.

“Will Mr. Swain please take the stand?” he said; and Swain took the chair.  “Now, Mr. Swain,” Goldberger began, after swearing him, “please tell us, in your own way, of what part you had in the incidents of Thursday night.”

Swain told his story much as he had told it to Godfrey and me, and I noticed how closely both Goldberger and the district attorney followed it.  When he had finished, Goldberger asked the same question that Godfrey had asked.

“While you were having the altercation with Mr. Vaughan, did you grasp hold of him?”

“No, sir; I did not touch him.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t touch him at any time, then or afterwards?”

“No, sir.  I didn’t see him afterwards.”

“What were your feelings when he took his daughter away?”

“I was profoundly grieved.”

“And angry?”

“Yes, I suppose I was angry.  He was most unjust to me.”

“He had used very violent language to you, had he not?”

“Yes.”

“He had threatened your life if you tried to see his daughter again?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Mr. Swain, as you stood there, angry and humiliated, didn’t you make up your mind to follow him to the house and have it out with him?”

Swain smiled.

“I’m lawyer enough to know,” he said, “that a question like that isn’t permissible.  But I’ll answer it.  I may have had such an impulse—­I don’t know; but the sight of the cobra there in the arbour put it effectually out of my head.”