His eyes, lowering to his wounded arm, startled before a thing that lay on his chest. A black crucifix. “Hm,” he muttered. “Then there should be a candle ... a lighted candle.” His head turned to the small table beside the bed. It was standing there. The candlestick he had brought in with him. And from its wick flickered a sun-obscured little flame. He stared intently. A paper-thin, whitened little flame.... “The Ballau murder,” he murmured; “candlestick and crucifix.” A feeling of panic swept him. The smile vanished. He reached and snuffed out the wick with his fingers. “The Ballau murder,” he repeated to himself, “but a bit less thorough.” The smile returned again to his white face. He raised his arm despite the pain in it.... A flesh wound. Terror as much as pain or physical shock had deprived him of his senses during the attack. Now he pushed himself cautiously to a sitting position and, with a strip of linen torn from the sheet, bound his arm. Behind the smile which lighted his worn-looking face he was thinking: “Ah, what a relief! I breathe again. This wound exonerates me.” The secret dread he had carried locked in his brain since the finding of Ballau’s body vanished in a laugh. He sat, his head buzzing, his eyes gleaming with happiness. He was free. The thing he had carried in him, that had gnawed sickeningly at the back of his thought, was removed. He had not killed Ballau. No murderer lurked within him. He laughed again at the naïveté of his logic. “For if it was I who murdered poor Ballau, it was not I who came into this room last night and tried to murder Julien De Medici. And since those two figures are one and the same, selah! I am innocent. What a sick, mad suspicion it was!” He shuddered at the memory of the secret that had lived like a specter in his soul since the night of the tragedy. An illusionary secret! For here he lay the victim of an attack identical to the one that had ended Ballau. The candlestick, the crucifix, the dagger thrust. Harding, the bland-faced valet, appeared in answer to his ring. He stood regarding his master in astonishment. “Your arm, sir....” His mouth remained open and speechless as he noted the disheveled hair and pallor of De Medici. “Yes, my arm,” De Medici smiled. “Fix it up. A cut. Get some hot water and bathe it.... And, by the way, Harding, did you hear anybody come in last night?” “No, sir.” “Well, somebody got into the room last night and tried to knife me.” “I heard nobody,” Harding answered. The valet busied himself excitedly dressing the wound in his arm. De Medici sat smiling dreamily, uttering occasional instructions and issuing orders for breakfast. “I must get up and out at once,” he explained. “But you can’t sir, with your arm in this condition.” “Nonsense. A little food and I’ll be whole again.”