He was a changed man. His face was thinner, sallower, more haggard, and the lines about his mouth deeper and more marked; yet he greeted me affably, with many apologies for not keeping his appointment. "I was here, very busy," he explained. "I rang you up twice on the 'phone, but each time you were engaged." "Well," I asked, going straight to the point, "what have you discovered?" "Very little," he said. "I've searched all day for finger-prints, but up to the present have found none, save those of Antonio, Ethelwynn, and members of the household." "You do not suspect any of the servants?" I whispered, full of suspicion of the crafty-looking Italian. "Of course not, my dear sir. What motive could they have in killing such an excellent, easygoing master as the Professor?" "Revenge for some fancied grievance," I suggested. But he only laughed my theory to scorn. I followed him upstairs, through the red boudoir to the laboratory, to which the fog had penetrated, and there watched him making his test for recent finger-prints. His examination was both careful and methodical. He drew a pair of old grey suede gloves over his hands, and, taking up one after another of the bottles and glass apparatus, he lightly coated them with some finely powdered chalk of a grey-green colour, afterwards dusting it off. On one or two of the bottles prints of fingers were revealed, and each of these he very carefully examined beneath the light, rejecting them one after the other. To me, unacquainted as I was with the various lines of the finger-tips, all looked alike. But this shabby, mysterious neighbour of mine apparently read them with the utmost ease, as he would a book. In its corner, in the same position in which we had left it on the previous night, lay the hideous body of the Professor, crouching just as he had expired. But Kershaw Kirk worked on, heedless of its presence. I remarked to him that he was a careful and painstaking detective, whereupon he straightened his back, and, looking me in the face, said: "Please don't run away with the idea that I'm a detective, Mr. Holford. I am not. I have no connection whatever with the police, whom, I may tell you, I hold in contempt. There's far too much red-tape at Scotland Yard, which binds the men hand and foot and prevents them doing any real good work. Look at the serious crimes committed in London during the past three years to the perpetrators of which the police have no clue! The whole police system in London is wrong. There's too much observation upon the speed of motor-cars and too little latitude allowed the police for inquiry into criminal cases." "Then you are not a police officer?" I asked, for within the last few hours I had become suspicious that such was the fact. "No, I am not. The reason I am inquiring into the death of Professor Greer is because, for the sake of my own reputation, and in order to clear myself of any stigma upon me, I must ascertain the truth."