"He is well enough, sir, to tell what he knows, but he claims to know nothing." And this, too, Doyle eagerly seconded, but was sent along in the ambulance, with the doctor to keep him out of mischief, and a parting shot to the effect that when the coroner was through with him the post commander would take hold again, so the colonel depressed more than the cocktail stimulated, and, as luck would have it, almost the first person to meet him inside the gloomy enclosure was his wife, and her few whispered words only added to his misery. The water still lay in pools about the premises, and the police had allowed certain of the neighbors to stream in and stare at the white walls and shaded windows, but only a favored few penetrated the hall-way and rooms where the investigation was being held. Doyle shook like one with the palsy as he ascended the little flight of steps and passed into the open door-way, still accompanied by "Little Pills." People looked at him with marked curiosity. He was questioned, re-questioned, cross-questioned, but the result was only a hopeless tangle. He really added nothing to the testimony of the hack-driver and Bonelli. In abject remorse and misery he begged them to understand he was drunk when he joined the party, got drunker, dimly remembered there was a quarrel, but he had no cause to quarrel with any one, and that was all; he never knew how he got home. He covered his face in his shaking hands at last, and seemed on the verge of a fit of crying. But then came sensation. Quietly rising from his seat, the official who so recently had had the verbal tilt with Cram held forth a rusty, cross-hilted, two-edged knife that looked as though it might have lain in the mud and wet for hours. "Have you ever seen this knife before?" he asked. And Doyle, lifting up his eyes one instant, groaned, shuddered, and said,-- "Oh, my God, yes!" "Whose property is it or was it?" At first he would not reply. He moaned and shook. At last-- "Sure the initials are on the top," he cried. But the official was relentless. "Tell us what they are and what they represent." People were crowding the hall-way and forcing themselves into the room. Cram and Ferry, curiously watching their ill-starred comrade, had exchanged glances of dismay when the knife was so suddenly produced. Now they bent breathlessly forward. The silence for the moment was oppressive. "If it's the knife I mane," he sobbed at last, desperately, miserably, "the letters are S. B. W., and it belongs to Lieutenant Waring of our bathery."