"Was it a new knife, a whole one, I mean, with all its blades sharp and in good order?"
"Yes. I can say that. I handled it several times."
"Then, whose blade left that?" And again she pointed to the same place on the stick where her finger had fallen before.
"I don't know what you mean." The sergeant looked puzzled. Perhaps, his eyesight was not very keen.
"Have you a magnifying-glass? There is something embedded in this wood. Try and find out what it is."
The sergeant, with a queer look at Mr. Black, who returned it with interest, went for a glass, and when he had used it, the stare he gave the heavily veiled woman drove Mr. Black to reach out his own hand for the glass.
"Well," he burst forth, after a prolonged scrutiny, "there is something there."
"The point of a knife blade. The extreme point," she emphasised. "It might easily escape the observation even of the most critical, without such aid as is given by this glass."
"No one thought of using a magnifying-glass on this," blurted out the sergeant. "The marks made by the knife were plain enough for all to see, and that was all which seemed important."
Mr. Black said nothing; he was feeling a trifle cheap;—something which did not agree with his crusty nature. Not having seen Mrs. Scoville for a half-hour without her veil, her influence over him was on the wane, and he began to regret that he had laid himself open to this humiliation.