“On his hands, too?” “Surely on his hands; only amateurs forget the hands.” “Ah!” said Lowry. “We’ll have the finger prints examined and compared with Mortimer’s, though it’s scarcely necessary, I imagine. It’s so evident that——” Wrenn broke in, almost frantically: “It’s only a make-up rag, sir! Every one uses make-up rags, sir, to wipe the make-up off!” “Ah!” said Lowry. “You provided yourself with these make-up rags, then?” “Yes, sir!” Wrenn spoke eagerly. “I asked the chambermaid at the hotel for some old pieces for Mr. Mortimer, and——” “Wrenn, don’t be a fool,” said Lowry, speaking sharply for the first time. “In the first place—unless I am much mistaken—make-up rags are used only when the make-up is taken off—right, Mr. Dukane?” The manager nodded. “And then—why, in that case, was this rag so precious that you had to shut it up in a trunk, before it had been used? For I take it that a make-up rag doesn’t show just one or two complete sets of finger prints when a man gets through with it! It must look something like a rag that’s used on brasses or an automobile! Also, I see that there are two or three cloths already on the dressing table.” He turned his back on Wrenn, and examined the bit of linen that he held, while the other detectives held their breath. “This,” he said at last, “was torn from the dress of some woman who was in the dressing room to-night, at some time after Mortimer was made up.” He turned to Dukane, with the faintest shrug, and said: “You know, when I tried to reconstruct the crime by putting every one in their places—the places they had occupied at the time of the shooting—I was attempting the impossible. For there evidently was some one else here, some one who has gone; some one”—his eyes flew suddenly and piercingly to Wrenn—“whom this man wishes to shield.” CHAPTER XII THE TWO DOORWAYS Whether it was strictly correct or not, no one was in a position to question, but, anyway, Inspector Lowry told Sybil finally to go home after leaving her address. A lot of skeleton theories had come tumbling down with the discovery that another and unknown woman had been present in Mortimer’s dressing room that night. Even Claire McAllister’s testimony—that Miss Merivale had told her she sometimes wished she could kill their star—fell flat after Sybil’s own confession of not only what she had felt, but what she had threatened. The whole business was, as Barrison could see, a sickening one for Inspector Lowry. He had fallen down right and left; practically speaking, he had nothing left now to work on, out of all his ingenious work of reconstruction. Only his examination of the two men on guard at the doors had brought out anything clear cut, anything on which seriously to work.