“I mean, old boy, that Antony has gone and put everything back exactly as he last saw it in Roger’s library. Roger, Roger’s wife, Antony and another fellow were in the dining-room. The telephone-bell rang in the library and Roger went to answer it, telling Antony to come with him. He didn’t turn on the light in the library. The telephone told Roger that the police were after him. And the two in the dining-room heard Roger telling Antony what he thought of him as a man and brother, then they heard a shot; and when they got to the door and switched on the light, they saw Roger dead at the desk and Antony standing where he was standing to-night. Antony went out by the window into the garden--and he has reconstructed the scene exactly as he last saw it, even to a dummy telephone and a revolver! In fact, everything is there except Roger. Silly, isn’t it?” Silly was not the word. “But why, why?” “That’s what I want to find out,” said Tarlyon. “Antony is playing some sort of a game with himself, and he’s frightening himself to death in doing it. He always was a superstitious ass. Giants usually are, somehow--perhaps because, having nothing physical to fear, they fear the psychic. I’ll bet he goes into that library every night at the same time--Roger shot himself at about twenty-five past eleven, by the way. Poor old Antony!” “But what was all that nonsense about the smell?” I asked. Tarlyon did not answer. At last he said: “Did you ever hear, Ralph, the theory that if Judas Iscariot had not come after Jesus he might have done all that Jesus did? But as he found he could not because he was too late, he was doomed to crime. In a sort of far-fetched way it was the same way with Roger and Antony. The tragedy of those two brothers has something absurdly, fantastically reasonable about it. You see, Roger was a year older and did all that Antony wanted to do, the fine and brilliant things, while poor Antony could do nothing but make a fool of himself, which he did only too well. Antony would have been a man of many accomplishments, for he’s no fool, but for the fact that Roger was before him--so Antony thought. And Roger loved Antony, while Antony hated and admired and feared Roger. And at last, somehow or another, he managed to betray Roger. No one knows what that last moment held for those two--no one knows what lay behind the insults that Roger heaped on Antony at that final moment. For they were overheard, you know, by Roger’s wife and the man who was dining there. But something seems to have stuck in Antony’s mind and grown very big with years. I’m rather concerned for the poor devil, Ralph. He’s still afraid of his elder brother. Or perhaps he feels that Roger left something unsaid which he must hear, and so he wants to re-create him.” It was as the taxi stopped at my door that Tarlyon cried out as though he had made a discovery: “Good God, of course!” “Of course what?” “Smoke, you fool! It _was_ smoke!” V