‘Did they go in there?’ asked Gerard, pointing to the open door of that small inner room, a mere den, where Jack Chicot had painted in the days when he cherished the hope of earning his living as a painter. Here of late he had drawn his wood-blocks, and here, on a wretched narrow couch, he had slept. ‘Yes, they went in,’ replied the nurse, ‘but I’m sure they didn’t find anything particular there.’ Gerard passed into the dusty little den. There was an old easel with an unfinished picture, half-covered with a ragged chintz curtain. Gerard plucked the curtain aside, and looked at the picture. It was crude, but full of a certain melodramatic power. The subject was from a poem of De Musset’s, a Venetian noble, crouching in the shadow of a doorway, at dead of night, dagger in hand, waiting to slay his enemy. There was a deal table, ink-stained, decrepit, scattered with papers, pens, pencils, a battered pewter inkstand, an empty cigar-box, a file of ‘Folly as it Flies,’ and odd numbers of other comic journals. On the old-fashioned window-seat--for these houses in Cibber Street were two hundred years old--there was a large wooden paint-box, full of empty tubes, brushes, a couple of palettes, an old palette-knife, rags, sponges. At the bottom of the box, hidden under rags and rubbish, there lay a long thin dagger, of Italian workmanship, the handle of finely-wrought silver, oxidized with age--just such a dagger as an artist would fancy for his armoury. One glance at the canvas yonder told Gerard that this was the dagger in the picture. George Gerard took up the dagger and looked at it curiously--a long thin blade, flexible, sharp, a deadly weapon in a strong hand, a weapon to inflict just such a wound as that deep stab which had slain La Chicot. He examined the blade, the handle--looking at both through his pocket microscope. Both were darkly tarnished, possibly with the recent stain of blood; but the weapon had been carefully cleansed, and there was no actual speck of blood upon either handle or blade. ‘Strange that the detectives should have overlooked this,’ he said to himself, replacing the dagger in the box. Mrs. Evitt had told him of Jack Chicot’s unaccountable disappearance, how he had gone out to call the police, and had never come back. What could this mean, except guilt? And here in the husband’s colour-box was just such a weapon as that with which the wife had been stabbed. ‘And I know that he was weary of her, I know that he wanted her to die,’ mused Gerard. ‘I read that secret in his face six months ago.’ He left the room presently, without any expression of opinion to the hospital nurse, who was eager to discuss the deed that had been done, and had theories of her own about it. He left the house and walked the neighbouring streets for an hour, waiting for the inquest.