“I suppose there’s nothing more here,” he murmured, his eyes wandering round the room. “Try it with the lights on. Switch on, inspector. . . . No. Ah, what’s that?” He went to the gas fire and picked out of its lumps of sham coal a scrap of gleaming metal. The next moment he was down on his knees, pulling the fire to pieces. “Give me an envelope, will you?” he said over his shoulder, and they saw he was collecting scraps of broken glass. “What is it, sir?” “That’s the bridge of a pair of rimless eyeglasses. And if we’re lucky we can reconstruct the lenses. When Rand was hit, his glasses jumped off and smashed themselves. That’s the fourth thing the slayer didn’t think of.” “You don’t miss much, Mr. Fortune. Still, it is baffling, very baffling. Even now, we don’t know anybody, so to speak. We don’t even know Rand. What was Rand, would you say? It was worth somebody’s while to do him in. I suppose he knew something. But what did he know? Who was Rand?” Reggie was putting on his overcoat. He collected his envelope and his cigarette box and put them away, looking the while with dreamy eyes at Superintendent Bell. “Yes,” he said; “yes, there’s a lot of unknown quantities about just now. Who the devil was Rand? Well, well! I think that finishes us here. Will you ring for the lift, inspector?” When he was left alone with Bell, he still gazed dreamily at that plump, stolid face. “Yes. Who the devil was Rand? And if you come to that, who the devil is Sandford?” “Good Lord, Mr. Fortune, do you mean this business is that business?” “Well, there’s a lot of unknown quantities about,” said Reggie. PHASE IV.--THE CHARGE When they talked about the case afterwards, Reggie and Lomas used to agree that it was a piece of pure art. “Crime unstained by any vulgar greed or sentiment; sheer crime; iniquity neat. An impressive thing, Lomas, old dear.” “So it is,” Lomas nodded. “One meets cases of the kind, but never quite of so pure a style. Upon my soul, Fortune, it has a sort of grandeur--the intensity of purpose, the contempt for ordinary values, the absolute uselessness of it. And it was damned clever.” Reggie chose a cigar. “Great work,” he sighed. “All the marks of the real great man, if it wasn’t diabolical. He was a great man, but for the hate in him. Just like the devil.” “You’re so moral,” Lomas protested. “Don’t you feel the beauty of it?” “Of course I’m moral. I’m sane. Oh, so sane, Lomas, old thing. That’s why I beat the wily criminal. And the devil, God help him.” “Yes, you’re as sane as a boy,” Lomas nodded. But all that was afterwards. Everything that was done in the case is not (though you may have feared so) written here. We take it in the critical, significant scenes, and the next of them arrived some days after the discovery of the corpse.