“I think with a long blow-gun.” “By George!” said Bertram softly. “So the spirit-wand of bamboo was a blow-gun! What led you to that, Average?” “The spirit rappings, which the talky woman in the Bellair Street apartment used to hear. That and the remnants of putty I found near the window. You see the doors opening through the whole length of the apartment gave a long range, where Mr.—er—Smith could practice. He had a sort of target on the window, and every time he blew a putty ball Mrs. Doubletongue heard the spirit. Am I right, sir?” The host bowed. “The fumes, whatever they were, killed swiftly?” “They did. Instantly; mercifully. Too mercifully.” “How could you know it was fumes?” demanded Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre. “By the dead flies, the effect upon the bell-boy, and the fact that no wound was found on the body. Then, too, there was the fulminate of mercury shell.” “Of what possible use was that?” asked Professor Gehren. “A question that I’ve asked myself, sir, a great many times over in the last twenty-four hours. Perhaps Mr. Smith could answer that best. Though—er—I think the shell was blown through the blowpipe to clear the deadly fumes from the room by its explosion, before any one else should suffer. Smith is, at least, not a wanton slaughterer.” “You are right, sir, and I thank you,” said the foreigner. He drew himself up weakly but with pride. “Gentlemen, I am not a murderer. I am an avenger. It would have gone hard with my conscience had any innocent person met death through me. As for that Turkish dog, you shall judge for yourself whether he did not die too easily.” From among the papers in a _tiroir_ against the wall he took a French journal, and read, translating fluently. The article was a bald account of the torture, outrage and massacre of Armenian women and girls, at Adana, by the Turks. The most hideous portion of it was briefly descriptive of the atrocities perpetrated by order of a high Turkish official upon a mother and two young daughters. “An Armenian prisoner, being dragged by in chains, went mad at the sight,” the correspondent stated. “I was that prisoner,” said the reader. “The official was Telfik Bey. I saw my naked daughter break from the soldiers and run to him, pleading for pity, as he sat his horse; and I saw him strike his spur into her bare breast. My wife, the mother of my children—” “Don’t!” The protest came from the Fifth Assistant Secretary of State. He had risen. His smooth-skinned face was contracted, and the sweat stood beaded on his forehead. “I—I can’t stand it. I’ve got my duty to do. This man has made a confession.” “Your pardon,” said the foreigner. “I have lived and fed on and slept with that memory, ever since. On my release I left my country. The enterprise of which I had been the head, dye-stuff manufacturing, had interested me in chemistry. I went to England to study further. Thence I came to America to wait.”