“I did take notice of some other thing, Mr. Grimsby,” he replied, “and for a moment I had dreams that you synchronize with me. It is a complimentary mistake which I make. Please forgive me. This ashtray”--he took up an ashtray from the table beside his hat--“is of great interest. You are agreeable, Mr. Searles”--turning to me--“that it is of great interest?” I stared rather helplessly. It was a common brass ashtray containing match sticks and cigarette ends. I could see nothing unusual about it, and so presently I shook my head. “Ah!” Moris Klaw inserted two long yellow fingers gingerly and plucked out a cigarette stump. He replaced the tray and held up the stump. “Behold!” he said, “what I find!” Grimsby now was frankly amazed and not a little angry. As for myself, familiar though I was with Klaw’s peculiar methods, I could not divine at what he was driving. “My friends,” he continued, looking from one to the other of us, and holding up the cigarette stump as a lecturer holds up a specimen, “the cigarette, a vice which has killed many men. I have known a woman to hang because of a hairpin, but men and women, too, many of them, because of a cigarette.” He opened a bulging pocket-case and tenderly deposited the stump inside. As he was about to close the case: “One moment, Mr. Klaw!” said Grimsby. “If that is evidence--though I can’t for the life of me see how it can be…” “But _I_ see!” cried Moris Klaw--“I, the old foolish from Wapping, behold in this the hangman’s rope!” He closed the case. “But----” Grimsby began again. “But me no buts!” Moris Klaw implored. “In _my_ hands it is the evidence, in _your_ hands it is the cigarette stump. But listen!” A bell rang. “It is Isis. I had arranged with her to meet me here. Perhaps, Mr. Grimsby, you would be so good as to open the door?” Grimsby obeying with alacrity, the beautiful Isis presently entered, exquisitely gowned. She gave me smiling greeting, this lovely daughter of a singular father, and whilst Grimsby deferentially held the door wide open, managed to introduce into the studio, without brushing it against the sides of the door, a large brown paper bag. “Ah!” Moris Klaw exclaimed, “it is my odically sterilized cushion. Place it here, my child.” He indicated a spot upon the floor. “My other engagements do not allow of my sleeping here for more than two hours, but, in that time, I shall hope to recapture the etheric storm in the mind of the slayer or the last great emotion in the brain of the slain. Something, certainly, I shall get, for this was no common crime.” From its paper wrappings Isis Klaw took a red silk cushion and placed it upon the spot where the dead man had been found. I turned aside, shuddering. That any human being, having seen what we had seen that day, could lie down and, above all, could sleep upon that haunted spot, was almost more than I could believe. Yet such was Moris Klaw’s intention, and that he would carry it out I did not doubt.