As he spoke he picked from the floor beside the bed a heavy metal water carafe which belonged on the bedside stand. Its surface was dented far more deeply than so short a tumble warranted. “Stabbed him,” said the doctor. “Then, as he cried out, stunned him. See, Chief?” The chief nodded. Then he turned from the bed and swept the room with his beetle-browed gaze. His eyes focused on the nearest window. It stood open, as did all the room’s other windows, on that breathless night. But its short muslin curtain was thrust aside so far as to be torn slightly from its rod. On the white sill was the distinct mark of a scrape in the paint and a blob of dried mud as from the instep of a boot. “Got in and out through the window,” decreed Quimby. “In a hurry going out.” “The door was locked,” put in Vail. “Locked from the inside.” “H’m!” mused the chief, crossing to the splintered portal. “I see. You folks broke it in, eh? Where’s the key?” “What key?” “Key of the door, of course. If Mr. Chase locked himself in he must have done it with a key. And it isn’t likely he took the key out of the lock afterward. Where is it? It isn’t in the keyhole.” “The door flew open pretty hard,” said Vail. “Perhaps the key was knocked out onto the floor. Shall I look?” “Never mind,” refused the chief. “It isn’t immediate. My men can look for it in the morning. I’m going to seal this room, of course, and keep some one on guard. That knife, now--that ought to be easy to trace. It isn’t like any other _I_ ever saw. It--” “You’re right,” acceded Vail, nettled at his lofty air, “it’s quite easy to trace. It’s mine.” “Yours?” The chief fairly spat the word at him. Again the heavy gray brows bent, the eyes mere slits of quizzical light between the puckered lids. “Yes,” said Vail. “I had it out, earlier in the evening. I used it to draw a cork. I didn’t put it back in my pocket. I must have left it lying somewhere. I looked afterward but I couldn’t find it. Some one must have--” “You left the knife in this room?” “No,” denied Vail, after a moment’s thought. “I couldn’t have done that. I didn’t come up here again. No, if I left it anywhere it was downstairs.” “H’m!” grunted the chief, non-committally. Irritated afresh by the official’s manner, Thaxton turned to the doctor, who was once more leaving the bedside. “Dr. Lawton,” he asked, “is there any chance he killed himself?” “Not the slightest,” replied Lawton with much emphasis. “He was lying on his left side. The point entered the carotid from behind. He could not possibly have struck the blow. And in any event he could not have stunned himself with that metal water bottle afterward. No, there is every proof it was not suicide. The man was murdered.” “And the murderer escaped through the window,” supplemented the chief. “Also, he entered by the same route. Now, we’ll leave everything as it is, and I’ll take my flashlight and examine the ground just below here.”