“I see,” said the coroner. “But we have not as yet made any remarks or comments which might be construed as supporting such a theory.” Lieutenant Norton leaned forward and spoke for the first time. “Have you any particular interest in proving that a murder has been committed instead of suicide?” he asked. “I see what you mean,” De Medici smiled slowly. “I am engaged to marry Miss Ballau and you think I have a personal interest in securing the collection of the insurance money left by her father. I have no such interest. I knew Mr. Ballau as well as I know anybody in the world. Had he decided to kill himself and conceal the fact, he would have done so in an intelligent manner.” “We discussed that once,” smiled the detective. De Medici nodded. The coroner, after a pause, continued his questioning. Q. “You heard Mr. Meyerson testify concerning the purchase of the dagger found in Mr. Ballau’s body.” A. “Yes.” Q. “Did you have any discussion with Mr. Ballau concerning the weapon after he had taken it home?” A charming theory and worthy of a more romantic-looking person than the reddish-faced Norton. De Medici smiled appreciatively at the detective. A. “I think we did talk about it.” Q. “On that night in the library you asked Lieutenant Norton whether he had observed any finger-prints on the hilt, did you not?” A. “Yes.” Q. “What did you say to Mr. Ballau concerning the dagger?” A. “I told him I didn’t like it. It had belonged to an ancestor of mine whose deeds I have never admired.” Q. “You have a revulsion toward such things—daggers of that kind, I take it?” A. “I fancy I have.” Q. “Yet you touched it when you leaned over the body of Mr. Ballau?” De Medici stared again at the detective. A memory focused vividly in his mind. The dead body, the dagger hilt, the moment he had reached forward to embrace the protruding thing in his fingers—the moment of fascination that had left him shuddering. Ah, this reddish-faced man was not stupid. He had surmised that. A. “I thought of withdrawing the blade from the body but stopped as my fingers encountered it.” “That will be all,” the coroner announced. De Medici arose and returned to his seat beside Florence. The coroner and Lieutenant Norton were conferring in whispers again. “The inquest is a farce,” De Medici mused. “They have determined on this clumsy ruse of throwing someone off guard as I thought that night.” Lieutenant Norton, summoned to the witness chair, was reciting again the details of the case. De Medici listened. With logic and a remarkably convincing mass of detail, the detective was going over the circumstances surrounding the death of Victor Ballau, and bit by bit reconstructing for the jury his theory of the grotesque suicide which the dead man had committed. He added to his theory the motive that had been brought out by the witnesses, the dead man’s financial difficulties, the changing of his will, his purchase of the dagger.