"Naturally when I heard that I thought I'd like to see the exterior of the building to ascertain if there was any opening, door or window, by which he could have left the upper floor without coming down the main staircase. That led me to beg permission of the people in the house across the passage there to look from one of the side windows, and so gave me my first view of the glass-room. What I saw was exactly what Mrs. Sherman and her daughter saw yesterday--namely, that spick and span room with the table in the centre and the vase of pink roses standing on it. "Need I go further than to say that when I heard of those women seeing a room that was badly littered a few minutes before suddenly become a tidy one with a table and a vase of roses standing in the middle of it, without anybody having come into the place for the purpose of making the change, I instantly remembered my own experience and suspected a painted blind? "When I entered this room to-day and saw the peculiar position of that blind I became almost certain I had hit upon the truth, and sent Mr. Narkom to the house across the way to test it. That's why I pulled the blind down. Why I stumbled and nearly fell into the tableau was because I had a faint suspicion of the horrible truth when I noticed how abominably thick the neck, hands, and ankles of that 'dead soldier' were; and I wanted to test the truth or falseness of the 'straw stuffing' assertion by actual touch, particularly as I felt sure that the presence of all these strongly scented flowers was for the purpose of covering less agreeable odours should the heat of the weather cause decomposition to set in before he could dispose of the body. I don't think he ever was mad enough to intend letting the thing remain a part of the tableau. I fancy he would have found an excuse to get it out somehow and to make away with it entirely, as, no doubt, he did with the body of Loti. "What's that, Mr. Narkom? No, I don't think that Murchison had any actual hand in the crime or really knew the identity of the man. I fancy he must have gone up to tell the fictitious Loti that he knew James Colliver had entered that glass-room and never come out of it, and Colliver, of course, had to shut his mouth by buying him off and sending him out of the country. That is why he took yet another disguise and pawned the jewels. He had to get the money some way. As for the rest, I imagine that when Colliver went up to the room to see that wax head, and Loti caught sight of him, the old Italian jumped on him like a mad tiger; and, seeing that it was Loti's life or his own, Colliver throttled him. When that was done, the necessity for disposing of the body arose, and the imposture was the actual outcome of a desire to save his own neck. That's all, I think, Mr. Narkom; so you may revise your 'notes' and mark down the Colliver case as 'solved' at last and the mystery of it cleared up after all." * * * * *