“He must have picked up the knife here,” insisted Miss Gregg, “after I used it for a corkscrew--either right afterward or else finding it here in the night after we’d all gone to bed. These windows with their backnumber clasps are ridiculously easy to open from outside. And from where Thax sat or lay in the study the sound of any one entering this room carefully couldn’t have been heard. Whoever came in to kill Willis Chase must have planned to do it with some other weapon--some weapon he brought along to do it with. Then he saw the knife, and he knew it would switch suspicion to Thax. So he used that.” “But the windows here were still fastened from inside, just now,” argued Doris. “Besides, it’s proved the murderer got in through a window upstairs. He couldn’t have come in through these windows and gotten the knife and then have gone out again and closed and locked them from the inside. He couldn’t. And Thax was the last person downstairs here last night. So nobody from _inside_ the house, either, could have gotten down here and stolen the knife and gone upstairs with it again. The study door is right at the foot of the stairs. Thax couldn’t have helped seeing and hearing him, even if he’d been able to step twice over Macduff without disturbing the dog. No, it couldn’t be.” “You are quite right,” agreed Miss Gregg. “It couldn’t. Lots of things in this mystery-drama world _can’t_ be. But most of them _are_. Which reminds me I must wake Horoson and have her get some coffee made. We’ll all be the better for breakfast.” She bustled to the hall as she spoke. Thaxton Vail was standing in the front doorway looking disconsolately out into the sunrise. “He went,” reported Vail, turning back into the house as Miss Gregg and Doris emerged into the hallway. “I’m sorry. For he isn’t fit to. He’s still all in.” “Who?” asked Doris, her mind still adaze. “Clive Creede. This thing has cut him up fearfully. He talked a lot of rot about having injured me and not having the courage to face me again. I told him it was absurd. But he went. He wouldn’t even wait for a taxi. Just went afoot, leaving his luggage to be sent for. Poor chap!” Miss Gregg passed on into the kitchen regions. The police, their inspection of the house’s exterior completed, were trooping ponderously upstairs, Lawton still trailing along dully in their wake. Doris and Vail stood alone in the glory of sunrise that flooded the wide old hall. For another few moments neither of them spoke again, but stood there side by side looking out on the fire-red eastern sky and at the marvel of sunrise on trees and lawn. Unconsciously their hands had met and were close clasped. It was Doris who spoke at last.