“Lyle turned his head away and stared down at the floor.  ’I might say,’ he answered, ‘that you placed it there.’

“Arthur gave a cry of anger and sprang at him, and then pitched forward into his arms.  The blood was running from the cut under the bandage, and he had fainted.  Lyle carried him back to the bed again, and we left him with the police and the doctors, and drove at once to the address he had given us.  We found the house not three minutes’ walk from St. George’s Hospital.  It stands in Trevor Terrace, that little row of houses set back from Knightsbridge, with one end in Hill Street.

“As we left the hospital, Lyle had said to me, ’You must not blame me for treating him as I did.  All is fair in this work, and if by angering that boy I could have made him commit himself, I was right in trying to do so; though, I assure you, no one would be better pleased than myself if I could prove his theory to be correct.  But we cannot tell.  Everything depends upon what we see for ourselves within the next few minutes.’

“When we reached the house, Lyle broke open the fastenings of one of the windows on the ground-floor, and, hidden by the trees in the garden, we scrambled in.  We found ourselves in the reception-room, which was the first room on the right of the hall.  The gas was still burning behind the colored glass and red, silk shades, and when the daylight streamed in after us it gave the hall a hideously dissipated look, like the foyer of a theatre at a matinee, or the entrance to an all-day gambling-hall.  The house was oppressively silent, and, because we knew why it was so silent, we spoke in whispers.  When Lyle turned the handle of the drawing-room door, I felt as though someone had put his hand upon my throat.  But I followed, close at his shoulder, and saw, in the subdued light of many-tinted lamps, the body of Chetney at the foot of the divan, just as Lieutenant Sears had described it.  In the drawing-room we found the body of the Princess Zichy, her arms thrown out, and the blood from her heart frozen in a tiny line across her bare shoulder.  But neither of us, although we searched the floor on our hands and knees, could find the weapon which had killed her.

“‘For Arthur’s sake,’ I said, ’I would have given a thousand pounds if we had found the knife in her hand, as he said we would.’

“‘That we have not found it there,’ Lyle answered, ’is to my mind the strongest proof that he is telling the truth, that he left the house before the murder took place.  He is not a fool, and had he stabbed his brother and this woman, he would have seen that by placing the knife near her he could help to make it appear as if she had killed Chetney and then committed suicide.  Besides, Lord Arthur insisted that the evidence in his behalf would be our finding the knife here.  He would not have urged that if he knew we would not find it, if he knew he himself had carried it away.  This is no suicide.  A suicide does not rise and hide the weapon with which he kills himself, and then lie down again.  No, this has been a double murder, and we must look outside of the house for the murderer.’