“Again,” said Inspector Long, a man with a black beard seated near one of the windows, “that head found in the cupboard. It is not Klein’s, for Klein was a clean-shaven man. We know, from the evidence of a chambermaid, that there was nothing in the cupboard the day before. It must have been put there during the night; therefore, it must have been put there by either Gyde or his valet, for they alone were in the room, therefore they must have brought it from the north. We know for certain that a man was murdered and decapitated in the north by Sir Anthony Gyde; there is not a hole in the evidence, the boy is perfectly believable; he is borne out by half a dozen witnesses, who saw the motor-car going and coming, and by the headless corpse of Klein. Well, then, did Sir Anthony bring two heads in that bag with him, the head of Klein and the one we found, which is so strangely like his own?” There was another silence, and then Freyberger spoke, telling of the pieces of marble he had found in the drawer and how he had taken them to Antonides to be reconstructed. “I did it on my own responsibility,” he said, “knowing the desperate urgency of the matter; to-morrow we will see what the thing represents.” “You did right,” said the chief. “In a case like this, seemingly most intricate, it is often some by-bit of evidence that opens it up and exposes everything to the light. One of the points that strike me most is the anatomical knowledge and the dexterity shown in the removal of the head.” He ceased, for a knock came to the door and an officer entered with a paper in his hand. “Report of the post-mortem examination of the body in the Gyde case, sir, just telegraphed from Carlisle.” “Give it me,” said the chief. He took the paper, and the officer withdrew. “‘Body of a fairly well-nourished man, dressed in grey tweed—clothes slashed with a knife, but no wounds found on the body. _Head evidently removed by a skilled anatomist_—Ha!—severed from neck where atlas meets occipital bone, ligamentum nuchae divided at a single stroke.’ This, so far from clearing matters, casts everything into a deeper darkness.” He paused a moment, and then went on. “We have incontrovertible evidence that yesterday afternoon Sir Anthony Gyde called upon the man Klein at a cottage on Blencarn Fell, in Cumberland; that he stayed there an hour and left with a black bag in his hand. Now, mark you, this boy, Lewthwaite, had his eye on the cottage the whole time. A very few minutes after Sir Anthony’s departure he peeped through the window, and saw the murdered body of Klein lying upon the floor. The whole mass of evidence goes to show that there were only two men concerned in this tragedy, Gyde and Klein, for Lewthwaite saw no one in the room.” “Might a third man have been in hiding in an upstairs room?” put in Inspector Long.