“Say he had previously removed a pane of glass—they are not large panes. Say, he reached through, locked the door inside—the French window, I mean—and then had put in the pane, reputtied it, and gone away.” “Gee!” cried the boy. “That could be!” “Of course it could. And there are other ways it might have been accomplished. Now, we don’t say that did happen, but what I want to know is, who is at the head of this investigation?” “I can’t feel that Mrs. Bates is,” Mrs. Peyton said, a little sullenly. “She was not married yet, and therefore, as resident housekeeper, I feel rather in authority myself.” “But you say you are the heir, Mrs. Bates?” the detective inquired. “Perhaps I ought not to have told that,” Emily Bates spoke regretfully. “But Doctor Waring’s lawyer will tell you, it is true I am the principal heir. It is so designated in his will, which you will find in a secret drawer in his desk.” “You know where this drawer is?” “I do.” “Later on, I will ask you to show us. If you are the heir, there is no further question of your authority here.” And Detective Morton left the room. CHAPTER VIII WHERE IS NOGI? Twenty-four hours later Cray, the District Prosecuting Attorney, stood in the Waring study. The body of the master had been removed, and to Cray’s regret he had not seen it before the embalmer’s work had removed the red ring on the forehead. “It was a sign,” he said to Morton, who was moodily listening. “A sign like that, left by the murderer, always means revenge.” “You agree to murder, then?” Morton spoke eagerly, glad to have his theory corroborated. “What else? Look here, Morton; it’s got to be either murder or suicide, hasn’t it? Yes? Well, then, to which of the two do the greater number of clues point? Sum up. For suicide we have only the locked room argument. I admit I don’t know how any one could get in or out of this study, but, as I say, that’s the only sign of suicide. Now, for murder we have the absence of the weapon, the robbery of the money and the ruby, and sign of a circle on the dead man’s forehead. Wish I’d seen that. It wasn’t burnt on, for it disappeared after the embalmers took care of it.” “Oh, no, it wasn’t as deep as a burn. More like an impression left by a ring of cold metal or the edge of a glass tumbler.” “Very strange, and decidedly an important clue. For, here’s the queer part. The doctors declare the mark must have been made while the man was alive—now, how can that be explained?” “Give it up. It’s too much for me. But it was too small a circle to have been made by the tumbler on the water tray. I measured it.”