The chair in which the dead body was lying, stood some little distance from the hangings of the wall. These, as Gebb discovered on further examination, had been draped back with a cord to reveal a small oil painting; but the cord--which had a loop at either end to slip over a brass nail, concealed beneath the hangings of satin--had been deftly removed (not torn) from its peg, and flung round the victim's neck. On the floor behind the chair Gebb picked up a half-burnt cigarette, which had smouldered out. With this in his hand he returned to the centre of the room and looked once more at the cards. These attracted him strangely. "Without doubt the fortune-telling was a trick," he said aloud. "The man set out the cards, and while his victim was selecting one he lighted a cigarette, and rose to stroll round the room. Not suspecting any danger--which shows, by the way, that she must have trusted him--his victim let him pass behind her chair. While there, he slipped the loops of the cord off the nail. Then when she turned up the death-card--a pure coincidence, no doubt--he threw the cord over her head and choked her before the poor wretch had time to call out for assistance. He then robbed the body at his leisure, and left the house. It's as clear as day." Presuming that the murderer had gone out by the front door, Gebb left the room and went into the passage. To his surprise he found that the front door was locked, but, as the detective noted, not bolted. "He must have locked it after he left the house," thought Gebb, "and no doubt did so to prevent intrusion and a too sudden discovery of his crime. I expect he threw away the key when outside. In the front garden most probably; I'll look." Before he could put his design into execution, which he intended doing by passing out the back way, Mrs. Presk arrived downstairs with the intelligence that Inspector Lackland was still searching the upper portion of the house for traces of the assassin, but could find nothing and no one. "So," said she, "I expect the wretch ran away after killing poor Miss Ligram." "By the front door," Gebb informed her, "and he locked it after him." "Did he?" said Mrs. Presk, with a stare; "now that's queer." "Why?" asked the detective, sharply. "Because Miss Ligram always kept the front door locked, and the key in her pocket. That was one of her queer ways which I never could abide." Without a word Gebb returned to the Yellow Boudoir, and searched in the pocket of the dead woman. Sure enough he found therein a large key which Mrs. Presk immediately declared to be that of the front door. Gebb was puzzled, as this discovery upset much of his previous reasoning. "In that case the man could not have cleared out by the front," he said, "as not having the key he could not lock the door after him. Let us see the back door; he may have escaped in that direction." "The back door was locked," said Mrs. Presk, promptly. "I had the key in my pocket when I went to the lecture."