“Oh, monsieur,” she cried, “it has everything to do with it.  If the assassin who slipped along the wall had carried the knife in his right hand, the wound would have been on the right side of the dead man’s neck.  But if, monsieur, the assassin carried the knife in his left hand, then the wound would be where it is, on the left side.  That made me believe, at first, that the assassin had only one arm — had lost his right arm — and must use the other; then, a little later, I understood . . . .  Oh, monsieur, don’t you understand; don’t you see that the assassin who stabbed Mr. Marsh was left-handed?”

In a moment it was all clear to everybody.  Only a left-handed man could have committed the crime, for only a left-handed man standing close against the left side of a room above one sitting at a desk against that wall could have struck straight down into the left shoulder of the murdered man.  A right-handed assassin would have struck straight down into the right shoulder, he would not have risked a doubtful blow, delivered awkwardly across his body, into the left shoulder of his victim.

The girl indicated Thompson with her hand.  “He did it; he’s left-handed.  I found out by dropping my glove.”

Panic enveloped the cornered man.  He began to shake as with an ague.  Sweat like a thin oil spread over his debauched face and the folds of his obese neck.  With his fatal left hand he began to finger the lapel of his coat where the faded rosebud hung pinned into the buttonhole.  And the girl’s voice broke the profound silence of the court-room.

“He has the money, too,” she said.  “I felt a bulky packet when I gave him the flower out of my bouquet last night.”

The big, thin-haired lawyer, leaving the courtroom after his withdrawal from the case, stopped at a window arrested by the amazing scene:  The police taking the stolen money out of Thompson’s pocket; the woman in the girl’s arms, and the transfigured prisoner standing up as in the presence of a heavenly angel.  This before him . . . and the splendid motor below under the sweep of the window, waiting before the courthouse door, brought back the memory of his biting, sarcastic words: 

“. . . or Cinderella in a pumpkin coach!”

And there occurred to him a doubt of the exclusive dominance of life by the gods he served.

XIV.  The Yellow Flower

The girl sat in a great chair before the fire, huddled, staring into the glow of the smoldering logs.

Her dark hair clouded her face.  The evening gown was twisted and crumpled about her.  There was no ornament on her; her arms, her shoulders, the exquisite column of her throat were bare.

She sat with her eyes wide, unmoving, in a profound reflection.

The library was softly lighted; richly furnished, a little beyond the permission of good taste.  On a table at the girl’s elbow were two objects; a ruby necklace, and a dried flower.  The flower, fragile with age, seemed a sort of scrub poppy of a delicate yellow; the flower of some dwarfed bush, prickly like a cactus.