Dukane explained, and with all the lights blazing, the players took the positions they had occupied at the beginning of the dark scene. Stage carpenters and sceneshifters did the same; also Willie and his assistant, even Dukane and Barrison. The woman Parry and old Wrenn went into the dressing rooms, where they had been, and closed the doors. Sybil Merivale mounted the little flight of steps and stood at the top, looking through the open door onto the stage. “Is that just the way you stood?” Every one answered “yes” to this question. One or two things became apparent by this plan, which rather surprised Barrison. He had not, for one thing, realized how close Willie Coster stood to the place where Mortimer fell. Yet, of course, he should have expected it. It was, as a matter of fact, Willie who directed the six shots, which were supposed to come from the point back of _Tarrant’s_ entrance. There were, as it turned out, at least three persons who were so close as to have been material witnesses had there been any light: Willie, the man who fired the shots and had charge of other off-stage effects, and—Norman Crane. Crane took up his position immediately inside the box set, close to the doorway. “Is that where you stood?” asked Lowry. “Yes. I played the part of a Mexican desperado, and was supposed to be on guard at the door leading down into the cellar, which was the stage.” “The door was open, as it is now?” “Yes.” “Then you could have seen through it anything that happened on the steps off stage?” “I could have if there had been light enough.” “As it was, you didn’t see anything?” “No.” “Didn’t hear anything?” The young man seemed to pause for just a moment before he said “No,” to this question also. If the inspector noticed his hesitation, he did not appear to do so. He began to talk in an undertone to one of the men who had come with him. John Carlton had been sending in frantic messages ever since the tragedy, begging to be permitted to come behind, but the allied powers there agreed that there were enough people marooned as it was. There was nothing to be gained by adding another, and one whom it would probably be unnecessary either to hold or to bind with nervousness and disappointment. In an undertone, Dukane said to Jim Barrison: “I thought they always sent for a doctor first of all? Why isn’t there one here?” “There is,” returned Jim, in the same tone. “He’s over there with the two policemen and the plain-clothes man who came in with Lowry—the little, old fellow with spectacles. Lowry’ll call on him again in a moment; he examined the body and pronounced life extinct. That was all that was absolutely necessary. Lowry has his own way of doing things, and he’s supreme in his department. He’s ‘reconstructing the crime’ just now.”