On the table East laid a fragment of an ebony cane, broken off short some three inches above the nickel ferrule. "Ebony is so brittle, is it not, Mr. Damopolon?" he said. "It is indeed," agreed Damopolon, standing up as though he believed East to have finished. "Yet this stick was made of a particularly fine piece," added East. "Carter!" he cried loudly. The library door opened ... and Detective Sergeant Carter, of New Scotland Yard, entered, carrying a broken ebony stick. Damopolon dropped his cigarette, and, whilst he stooped to recover it: "Carter and I went fishing this afternoon," said East, "in the Black Gap. The criminal had sought to hide the broken cane--which bears his monogram--and also the image. He had tied them together, filled the image with clay, and dropped them into the water. Fortunately, they stuck upon an outstanding mass of weeds, and we did not fish in vain. Is there any point, Mr. Damopolon, which I have not made clear? I don't know what implement you used to strike Sir Jeffrey, nor do I know what you did with his ash-stick!..." Clutching wildly at the table, I rose to my feet, my gaze set amazedly upon the man thus accused, upon the man I had called my friend, upon the man who owed so much to the dead baronet. And he?... He tossed his cigarette into the hearth and shrugged his shoulders. But, now, I saw that he was deathly pale. He began speaking, in a hoarse, mechanical voice: "I struck him with a broken elm branch," he said. "His hat saved him. I completed the matter with my bare hands. I was desperate. You need not tell me that Olive--Miss Baird--has confessed to our secret marriage, nor shall I weary you with the many reasons I had to hate her father and the pressing need I had for the fortune which she inherits at his death. It is finished; I have lost, and----" "Carter!" cried East. "Quick! quick!" But though the detective, who had been edging nearer and nearer to the speaker, now sprang upon him with the leap of a panther, he was too late. The sound of a muffled shot echoed through The Warrens, and the Greek fell with an appalling crash fully over the library table, so that the blue monkey slid across its polished surface and was shattered to bits upon the oaken floor! The Riddle of Ragstaff I "Well, Harry, my boy, and what's the latest news from Venice?" Harry Lorian stretched his long legs and lay back in his chair. "I had a letter from the governor this morning, Colonel. He appears to be filling his portfolio with studies of windows and doorways and stair-rails and the other domestic necessities dear to his architectural soul!" Colonel Reynor laughed in his short, gruff way, as my friend, Lorian, gazing sleepily about the quaint old hall in which we sat, but always bringing his gaze to one point--a certain door--blew rings of smoke straightly upward. "I suppose," said our host, the Colonel, "most of the material will be used for the forthcoming book?"