"It’s not he," I repeated. "I’ve often seen him. It’s _not_ the man." "Well—well——" stammered O’Mally, coming out of his stupor. "Who on earth is it?" "How do I know—Sammis, I suppose. It’s like him—the nose, the eyes and the eyebrows, and the mustache. But," I looked at them, gazing like two stupefied animals at the head on the pillow, "it’s _not_ Johnston Barker." O’Mally, with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair, his hands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on the floor before him. Babbitts stood paralyzed, leaning on the foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary situation—three live men, hot on the chase of a fourth and in the moment of victory faced by the most inscrutable and solemn thing that life holds—a dead man. We couldn’t get over it, couldn’t seem to think or act, grouped round the bed with the whistling rush of the gas loud on the silence. Then suddenly, another and more distant sound broke up our stupefaction. Someone was coming up the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I made a run for the door, O’Mally’s whisper hissing after me: "If it’s that woman, keep her away for a while. I want to go over the room." It was Miss Graves, ascending slowly with the help of the balustrade. I caught her on the landing and told her what we’d found. She was not greatly surprised—the doctor had warned her. I explained the broken door by telling her we had been alarmed by the silence and had forced our way in. That, too, she took quietly, and turned away, gliding shadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant for the doctor. When I reëntered the room its aspect was changed. A sheet covered the dead man and O’Mally and Babbitts, with all the burners in the chandelier blazing, had started looking over the room. The detective was already at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going through the clothes over the chair and the few others that hung in the cupboard. "Hustle and get busy," said O’Mally, as he heard me come in. "If this isn’t Johnston Barker, it’s the man we’ve been trailing and I’m pretty sure it’s the one that attacked Ford." There was a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and some books on it. Moving these I came upon two newspaper clippings, relating to the suicide of Harland. In both Anthony Ford was mentioned. The reporters had evidently spoken to him that night on the street, gleaning any fragments of information they could. One alluded to the fact that he was employed in the offices below Harland’s, the Azalea Woods Estates. These words were heavily underlined in pencil. "Looks like it from this," I said, showing the clipping to O’Mally. He glanced at it and grunted, going back to his inspection of a sheaf of papers he had found in one of the desk pigeonholes.