"Not necessarily. Suppose you were sitting there, and heard a noise, and looked around and saw me standing here, you wouldn't jump from the chair, would you?"
"No; I'd have no reason to jump from you."
"Perhaps Vaughan thought he had no reason to jump from the man he saw—if he saw anyone. I'm inclined to think, however, that he didn't suspect anyone else was in the room until he felt the cord about his throat."
"And, of course," said Goldberger, taking the cord again and looking at it, "it was while the murderer was making it into a noose with his blood-stained fingers that he stained it in that way. Don't you agree, Mr. Godfrey?"
"That is a possible explanation," Godfrey conceded.
"But why did he make this second knot?" inquired the coroner; "the knot which holds the noose tight and prevents it from slipping?"
"If he hadn't knotted it like that he would have had to stand there holding it until his victim was dead. As it was, he didn't have to wait."
I shivered a little at the thought of the scoundrel calmly tying the knot to secure his noose, and then leaving his victim to twitch his life out.
"It's no little trick to tie a knot like that," Godfrey added, thoughtfully. "I should like to study it."
"All right," agreed Goldberger; "you can have it whenever you want it," and he got a heavy manila envelope out of his pocket and placed the cord carefully inside. "Now we must get that robe off. We can't run any risk of having those finger-prints smeared."