The victim was apparently nearly sixty, with hair and moustache turning white, rather stoutly built, and broad-shouldered. His position was distorted and unnatural, as though he had twisted himself in the final agonies of death. The thin waxen hands were clenched tightly, and the linen collar was burst from the neck, while the Professor's dark blue fancy vest bore a stain where the assassin's knife had struck him unerringly in the heart. Of his features I, a stranger, could distinguish but little, so swollen, livid, and scarred were they that I was instantly horrified by their sight. The disfigurement had been so terrible that there remained hardly any semblance to a human face. "Well," exclaimed Kirk at last, "you have seen it! Now what is your opinion?" We were standing alone in the great laboratory, for Antonio and his brother had remained downstairs at my companion's suggestion. I looked round that great silent workshop of one of the most distinguished chemists of the age, and then I gazed upon the mortal remains of the man upon whom so many honours had been showered. Warped, drawn, crouching, with one arm uplifted almost as though to ward off a blow, the body remained a weird and ghastly object. "Has it been moved?" I inquired when I recovered speech. "No; it is just as we found it--just as the unknown assassin left it," he said. "The disfigurement, as far as I can judge, has been caused by some chemical agency--some acid or other substance placed upon the face, with fiendish cruelty, immediately before death." I bent closer to the lifeless face in order to examine it, and afterwards agreed with him. It was undoubtedly a murder prompted by a fierce and bitter vengeance. "The work of a madman, it may be," I suggested. But Kershaw Kirk shook his head, saying: "Not of a madman, but of a very clever murderer who has left not a trace of his identity." "Do you think that the Professor was struck down at the spot where he now is?" I asked, for my friend seemed to be something of an expert in the habits of the criminal classes. "I think not. Yet, as you see, the place is in no way disordered. There is no sign whatever of a struggle." I looked around, and as far as I could discern everything was as it should be. Upon the nearest table in the centre was a very delicate glass apparatus in which some experiments had recently been made, for certain yellowish liquids were still within. Had this table been violently jarred, the thin glass tubes would have been disarranged and broken, a fact which showed conclusively that the fatal blow had been struck with great suddenness and in silence. It had not occurred to Kirk to examine the dead man's pockets before, and now, kneeling at his side, he was in the act of doing so.