“How did you discover this?”
“By the simplest clue. I chanced to notice on Mr. Hemmingway’s desk a pencil, freshly sharpened, but sharpened in a totally different way from those sharpened by the man himself. I looked at all the other pencils on his desk, at the one taken from his pocket and at one in his bedroom—they are all sharpened in exactly the same way, with numerous long careful shaves, producing a whittled pyramid. The pencil I spoke of—here it is—is sharpened by only five strong, clean cuts, making a short exposure of cut wood, quite different from the long point of wood in the others. Then I looked in the waste-basket, which at your orders had not been touched since the discovery of the crime, and _on top_ I found the chips and lead-dust of this very pencil. They were _on top_ of some torn envelopes whose postmarks proved they had come in Monday evening’s mail, which reaches the Hemmingway house about six-thirty. Hence, whoever sharpened that pencil did it _after_ six-thirty o’clock Monday night, and _before_ the discovery of Mr. Hemmingway’s dead body.”
Mr. Garson listened breathlessly. “And then?” he said.
“And then,” went on Bayliss, “I looked around for some pencils sharpened like that, and found several on and in Fiske’s desk in the library. The pencil might have been borrowed from Fiske’s desk, but it was sharpened right there at Mr. Hemmingway’s desk after half-past six o’clock. Fiske, as you know, testified that he left at four and did not return until Tuesday morning.”
Bayliss’ deductions were true. Confronted suddenly with the story and with the traced envelope, Fiske broke down completely and confessed all. He had been planning it for weeks, and had the decoy letter ready to use when Mr. Hemmingway should have a large amount of bonds in his own home safe. The whole story of the Saturday morning interview was a figment of Fiske’s fertile brain, and of course Mr. Hemmingway had no suspicions of his nephew. Fiske had known of the expected callers, had watched outside the house until the last one went away and then, running up the steps, had stopped Mr. Hemmingway just as he was closing the door and requested a short interview. Innocently enough Mr. Hemmingway took his secretary into the library, and, while waiting for his fell opportunity, Fiske talked over some business matters. While making a memorandum, Mr. Hemmingway broke his pencil point, and, unthinkingly, Fiske obligingly sharpened it.
“And to think,” murmured Bayliss to Harris, “that little act of ordinary courtesy proved his undoing!”
“Marvelous, Bayliss, marvelous!” said Harris.
THE END
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1911 issue of Adventure magazine.