"Well then," said Dunlap, "assuming, for the sake of the argument, that these various marks which you have called trails were made by the feet of three different people; admitting even that one of these individuals was Arbogast, who often stays here after banking hours, I do not see that you have established by any satisfactory evidence your assumption that the other so-called trails are those of Chatham and a stranger. For aught I know to the contrary, they may have been made by some of the bank employés in the discharge of their regular duties. Chatham's coat may have caught on a nail in the telephone closet last week, while he was here in his legitimate capacity of expert accountant. The change of the combination of the safe may be the result of an error; for we have no direct proof whatever that Arbogast is a defaulter. And then, when it comes to your interesting description of the alleged shooting of Arbogast, it strikes me that you are entirely carried away by your enthusiasm; for, in your minute description of the path of the bullet, at a certain angle, of which you seem to know the measure almost to the fraction of a second, you overlook several important things. Two shots were fired yesterday in or near the Knickerbocker bank. _In_, say you, because here is a revolver with two empty cartridge shells; here is a black mark, which may have been produced by the ricochet of a bullet, and here is a shapeless piece of lead, which may be that bullet. As, however, one bullet cannot account for two shots, you are forced at once to assume that Chatham has carried away the second one in the palm of his hand. This is ingenious, very ingenious, but----" "His blood is on the telephone receiver," observed Sturgis quietly. "Blood!" exclaimed Dunlap; "why, with the carnage that you have imagined here, there should be oceans of blood. Here is a man, running around with a wounded hand, who leaves a few drops of blood on the telephone receiver, and nowhere else. And here is another man, shot through the lungs,--excuse me, through the upper lobe of the left lung,--who does not bleed at all. And where is he now? Such a wound as you have given him must, I take it, be fatal, or, at any rate, serious. Yet here is a dead or, at least, a dying man, calmly walking off as if--as if the curtain had fallen at the end of your drama, and the corpse had hurried off to his dressing-room." "You have forgotten something else," suggested the reporter smiling. Dunlap looked at him questioningly. "Yes; you have forgotten the pistol replaced in the drawer after Arbogast was shot, and the doors of the bank carefully locked." "True. No, my dear sir; your elaborate theory will not bear an instant's calm examination."