deep gash across the jugular, which the triumphant doctor instantly identified
as having been made with a sharp steel edge like a razor. The other was that
immediately under the bank lay littered three shining scraps of steel, each
nearly a foot long, one pointed and another fitted into a gorgeously jeweled
hilt or handle. It was evidently a sort of long Oriental knife, long enough to be
called a sword, but with a curious wavy edge; and there was a touch or two of
blood on the point.
"I should have expected more blood, hardly on the point," observed Doctor
Prince, thoughtfully, "but this is certainly the instrument. The slash was
certainly made with a weapon shaped like this, and probably the slashing of
the pocket as well. I suppose the brute threw in the statue, by way of giving
him a public funeral."
March did not answer; he was mesmerized by the strange stones that
glittered on the strange sword hilt; and their possible significance was
broadening upon him like a dreadful dawn. It was a curious Asiatic weapon.
He knew what name was connected in his memory with curious Asiatic
weapons. Lord James spoke his secret thought for him, and yet it startled him
like an irrelevance.
"Where is the Prime Minister?" Herries had cried, suddenly, and somehow
like the bark of a dog at some discovery.
Doctor Prince turned on him his goggles and his grim face; and it was
grimmer than ever.
"I cannot find him anywhere," he said. "I looked for him at once, as soon
as I found the papers were gone. That servant of yours, Campbell, made a
most efficient search, but there are no traces."
There was a long silence, at the end of which Herries uttered another cry,
but upon an entirely new note.
"Well, you needn't look for him any longer," he said, "for here he comes,
along with your friend Fisher. They look as if they'd been for a little walking
tour."
The two figures approaching up the path were indeed those of Fisher,
splashed with the mire of travel and carrying a scratch like that of a bramble
across one side of his bald forehead, and of the great and gray-haired
statesman who looked like a baby and was interested in Eastern swords and
swordmanship. But beyond this bodily recognition, March could make neither
head nor tail of their presence or demeanor, which seemed to give a final touch
of nonsense to the whole nightmare. The more closely he watched them, as
they stood listening to the revelations of the detective, the more puzzled he
was by their attitude—Fisher seemed grieved by the death of his uncle, but