This morning Seligmann was dead, lying limply in a deep arm-chair in the study of his home in Hampstead. Owing to some misunderstanding I had arrived before the doctor who had been sent for, and, as I have said, the sight nauseated me. Downward, through his neck, a stiletto had been driven, a death-dealing blow delivered from behind, apparently, but besides this his face and throat were torn as though some great bird had attacked him with powerful talons. The description is inadequate, perhaps, but it was too terrible a sight to enlarge upon. Quarles and the doctor arrived at the same time, and the three of us entered the room together. After looking at the dead man for a few moments, Quarles stood apart while the doctor made his examination, but I noticed that his eyes were particularly alive behind his round goggles. The doctor was puzzled. "The stiletto killed him," he said, slowly, looking at me, "but these other wounds--the sudden explosion of some vessel might have caused them, but there are no fragments. It almost looks as if the flesh had been torn by a rake. He has been dead some hours." "Yesterday was Sunday," I replied, "and this room was not opened." "That accounts for the time," he said. "The work of a madman, perhaps. Murder, undoubtedly." When the doctor had gone, after he had superintended the removal of the dead man to a small room off the hall, Quarles moved to the writing-table. "Glad you sent for me, Wigan. What has the wife to say? He was married, I suppose? There is a feminine note about the house." "Mrs. Seligmann is away," I answered, "and as yet I have only interviewed the man who found his master. He was inclined to be hysterical. Two women-servants had a day off yesterday, and are not expected back until this morning." "Dead many hours," said Quarles; "was probably lying here yesterday, and we saw him on Saturday. I don't think he left the house before the fall of the curtain." "No, I think not." "He couldn't have got here before midnight, then," said Quarles. "That helps us to the time of the murder. It would be a late hour for a visitor, and I see no card lying about." "My dear professor, visitors of this sort do not leave their cards." "Look at this pen on the blotting-pad, Wigan; it might have been just put down--put down, not dropped from paralyzed fingers, nor from a hand raised in self-defense. It was used, probably, to make these meaningless lines and curves upon the pad. A man engaged in a serious conversation might draw them as he talked. That chair there was pushed back by the doctor, but it was close to the table, just where a visitor would sit to talk to a man seated at the table. Now mark, the dead man is found in an arm-chair removed from the table, yet his cigar was put carefully into the ash tray, half smoked, you see, and the ash not knocked off. Oh, yes, Mr. Seligmann had a visitor of whom he had no fear, and who might reasonably have left a card."