"Assassin!" I retorted calmly. "Only an alienist can save you now. In this awful moment--" A light touch on my arm interrupted me, and, a trifle irritated, as any man might be when checked in the full flow of eloquence, I turned to find Mildred at my elbow. "Let me talk to him," she said in a quiet voice. "Perhaps I may not irritate him as you seem to." "Very well," I said. "Jones and I are here as witnesses." And I folded my arms in an attitude not, perhaps, unpicturesque. "Dr. Quint," said Mildred in her soft, agreeable voice, and actually smiling slightly at the self-confessed murderer, "is it really true that you are guilty of shedding the blood of Professor Boomly?" "It is," said Quint, coolly. She seemed rather taken aback at that, but presently recovered her equanimity. "Why?" she asked gently. "Because he attempted a most hellish crime!" yelled Quint. "W-what crime?" she asked faintly. "I'll tell you. He wanted the Carnegie medal, and he knew it would be given to me if I could incubate and hatch my batch of Silver Moon butterfly eggs. He realised well enough that his Heliconian eggs were not as valuable as my Silver Moon eggs. So first he sneaked in here and put an ichneumon fly in my breeding-cage. And next he stole the Silver Moon eggs and left in their place some common _Plexippus_ eggs, thinking that because they were very similar I would not notice the substitution. "I did notice it! I charged him with that cataclysmic outrage. He laughed. We came into personal collision. He chased me into my room." Panting, breathless with rage at the memory of the morning's defeat which I had witnessed, Quint glared at me for a moment. Then he jerked his head toward Mildred: "As soon as he went to luncheon--Boomly, I mean--I climbed over that transom and dropped into this room. I had been hunting for ten minutes before I found my Silver Moon eggs hidden under the carpet. So I pocketed them, climbed back over the transom, and went to my room." He paused dramatically, staring from one to another of us: "Boomly was there!" he said slowly. "Where?" asked Mildred with a shudder. "In my room. He had picked the lock. I told him to get out! He went. I shouted after him that I had recovered the Silver Moon eggs and that I should certainly be awarded the Carnegie medal. "Then that monster in human form laughed a horrible laugh, avowing himself guilty of a crime still more hideous than the theft of the Silver Moon eggs! Do you know what he had done?" "W-what?" faltered Mildred. "He had stolen from cold storage and had concealed the leaves of the Bimba bush, brought from Singapore to feed the Silver Moon caterpillars! _That's_ what Boomly had done! _"And my Silver Moon eggs had already begun to hatch!!! And my caterpillars would starve!!!!"_ His voice ended in a yell; he struggled on his chair until it nearly upset. "You lunatic!" I shouted. "Was that a reason for spilling the blood of a human being!" "It was reason enough for me!"