“Yes, but where is the bill-file?” asked Marsh. “There’s one on the desk, to be sure, but it is full of papers, and shows no sign of having been used for a criminal purpose. If, as Mr. Lockwood insists, this is a suicide case, the victim positively could not have cleaned that file and restored the papers after stabbing himself!” “He most certainly could not have done that!” declared Doctor Greenfield. Marsh examined the file carefully. It was an ordinary affair consisting of a steel spike on a bronze standard. It would without doubt make an efficacious implement of murder, but it was difficult to believe it had been used in that way. For the bills and memoranda it contained were, to all appearance, just as they had been thrust on the sharp point—and surely, had they been removed and replaced, they would have shown traces of such moving. “Anyway,” Doctor Greenfield said, after another examination, “the hole in the side of Waring’s neck seems to me to have been made with an instrument slightly larger than that file. Surely, there are round stilettos, are there not?” “Yes, there are,” said Lockwood, “I have seen them.” “Where?” demanded the Examiner, suddenly turning on him. “Why—I don’t know.” For once, the Secretary’s calm was a trifle shaken. “I should say in museums—or in private collections, perhaps.” “Are you familiar with so many private collections of strange weapons that you can’t remember where you have seen a round-shaped blade?” Examiner Marsh stared hard at him and Lockwood became taciturn again. “Exactly that,” he conceded. “I have sometime, somewhere, seen a round-bladed stiletto—but I cannot remember where.” “Better brush up your memory,” Marsh told him, and then the police arrived. The local police of Corinth were rather proud of themselves as a whole, and they had reason to be. Under a worthwhile chief the men had been well trained, and were alert, energetic and capable. Detective Morton, who took this matter in charge, went straight to work in a most business-like way. He examined the body of John Waring, not as the medical men had done, but merely to find possible clues to the manner of his death. “What’s this ring on his forehead?” he asked, looking at the dead man’s face. “I don’t know—that struck me as queer,” said Greenfield. “What is it, Doctor Marsh?” The Examiner peered through his glasses. “I can’t make that out, myself,” he confessed, frankly. Morton looked more closely. There was a red circle on Waring’s forehead, that looked as if it had been put there of some purpose. A perfect circle it was, about two inches in diameter, and it was red and sunken into the flesh, as if it might have been done with a branding iron.