"Bless you, yes! a woman could have done it easily," the Colonel declared, "only unfortunately there don't seem to have been any women about. Why, I've seen it done in Korea with a turn of the wrist. It's all knack." Wrayson shuddered slightly. The Colonel's words had troubled him more than he would have cared to let any one know. "Woman or man or child," Mason remarked, "the person who did it seems to have vanished in some remarkable manner from the face of the earth." "He certainly seems," the Colonel admitted, "to have covered up his traces with admirable skill. I have read every word of the evidence at the inquest, and I can understand that the police are completely confused." Heneage and Mason exchanged glances of quiet amusement whilst the Colonel helped himself to cheese. "Dear old boy," the latter murmured, "he's off on his hobby. Let him go on! He enjoys it more than anything in the world." Heneage nodded assent, and the Colonel returned to the subject with avidity a few moments later. "This man Morris Barnes," he affirmed, "seems to have been a somewhat despicable, at any rate, a by no means desirable individual. He was of Jewish origin, and he had not long returned from South Africa, where Heaven knows what his occupation was. The money of which he was undoubtedly possessed he seems to have spent, or at any rate some part of it, in aping the life of a dissipated man about town. He was known to the fair promenaders of the Empire and Alhambra, he was an _habitué_ of the places where these--er--ladies partake of supper after the exertions of the evening. Of home life or respectable friends he seems to have had none." "This," Mason declared, leaning back and lighting a cigarette, "is better than the newspapers. Go on, Colonel! Your biography may not be sympathetic, but it is lifelike!" The Colonel's eyes were full of a distinct and vivid light. He scarcely heard the interruption. He was on fire with his subject. "You see," he continued, "that the man's days were spent amongst a class where the passions run loose, where restraint is an unknown virtue, where self and sensuality are the upraised gods. One can easily imagine that from amongst such a slough might spring at any time the weed of tragedy. In other words, this man Morris Barnes moved amongst a class of people to whom murder, if it could be safely accomplished, would be little more than an incident." The Colonel lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair. He was enjoying himself immensely.