I knew the room, and I was not amazed. Casual thoughts....--Mildred was here: you are the woman for whom men kill, a white-faced man killing with shiny boots ... went through my mind as I leaned down: I was unamazed and cool, lifting the sheet that lay upon the body. The face did not stop me. I opened the white shirt with its solid bubbles of blood, and my sure hands went to the wound. The blade had been struck from a point higher than the breast, so that its angle from above was acute. It had passed through the pectoralis major and minor muscles, through the fourth intercostal space, and into the right auricle of the heart. The ascending portion of the aorta had been severed. Death was immediate and clean. No surgeon with a body prostrate under his hand could have cut better. This body now was prostrate before me. Swiftly, my eyes measured it: it was six feet, possibly six feet two.... I folded back the shirt, and now, as if I had been satisfied, I looked at the face of Philip LaMotte. I studied the face which, not twelve hours since, had come to me in the apocalyptic street. A white pallor overlaid the rich dark pigmentation. The beard stubble had grown: it emphasized the accurate delicacy of the chin and the tender strength of the lips. The nose arched high. The brow was serenely broad: the black curled hair, like a filet, came low and round. The shut eyes made the vision startling: a Saint of the Chartres Porche. I saw myself crouched over this slain saint whom death had sculpted into marble. My mind remarked with an aloof surprise, how little my observations and my will at work surprised me. Was I discovering, indeed? or was I appraising? Was I probing a crime that for good cause haunted me, or was I reviewing ... reviewing----? I was on my knees crouched over the body of Philip LaMotte. I heard the door. I looked up at the figure of Detective Gavegan. With careful grace, I arose. “Does the boy Case have a good memory of the man’s size, who brought the message?” “He says: about medium size.” “How tall is Case?” “You saw him. He’s a short darkey.” “If the man’d been Mr. LaMotte’s size, Case would have known it?” “Six foot, one and a half? Well, I guess.” Gavegan flattened his eyes once more upon me in a simagre of study. “I know what you’re thinkin’,” he snickered. “They all likes to play detective. How could so short a man have finished him so fine? Size ain’t strength, Doctor Mark: no more than a big man need lack for wits.” Gavegan’s huge form swelled. I watched him. The hopelessness of making him respond to my discoveries, still so dark to myself, fought against a pleasant call in me that it would be wrong to hide anything from the law. “Has that message ... has any letter been found?” He shook his head wisely. “No: nor there won’t be. The final examination is this morning. That’s why the body ain’t yet been removed. But there won’t be. That letter was mere pretext.” “This looks a simple case to you?”