"Mr. Halliday," nodded the Superintendent. "Unhealthy looking gentleman, he is. What I call fidgety, if you know what I mean. Very much on the jump, I thought to myself. No occupation, which is fishy, if you look at it that way. Lost his job, if you ask me."
The Inspector waited until this excursion into the realms of conjecture was over. Then he said: "And he, I think you said, admits that he did enter the study somewhere about twelve o'clock, and had a disagreement with the General, on a subject which he prefers not to disclose. He doesn't know when he left the study, but thinks he was not there more than a quarter of an hour at the most. He then went up to his room, and joined the rest of the party on the terrace about ten minutes later. So far as you know, he was the last person to see the General alive. A few minutes before one o'clock Mrs. Mrs." — he glanced down at one of the many sheets of paper laid before him — "Mrs. Twining went to fetch the General to join the party on the terrace for a cocktail According to her story she found him dead at his desk. She bent over him, saw that he had been stabbed, and that there was nothing she could do, and returned to the terrace to break the news. Have I got that right?"
"You've got it right as far as it goes," replied the Superintendent disparagingly. "But there's a lot more to it than that, I can tell you. You've left out the movement of all these visitors staying in the house for one thing."
"Until I've had time to read the statements over carefully I think I'd better confine myself to the main outline. Superintendent. May I see the doctor's reports?"
The Superintendent hunted through a sheaf of documents, and handed two typewritten sheets of foolscap across the desk. "Here you are. You'll want to have thc photographs too," he added, producing these.
"Thanks." Inspector Harding took the prints, and laid them down, without raising his eyes from the report in his hand. He read in silence for a minute or two, while the Superintendent and the Sergeant watched him. Then he looked up. "I see. He was stabbed from behind as he sat at his desk, with a Chinese dagger used by him as a paper-knife, the knife entering the neck below the right ear, and severing the carotid artery. Death, in the opinion of' — he consulted the first report — "Dr Raymond, occurring within a minute, possibly less. No finger-prints?"
The Superintendent shook his head. "No, that's just what makes it difficult for us. Nowadays people are so knowing, what with story books about murders and I don't know what besides, that they're up to all the dodges. Whoever done this murder took care to wear gloves. That's all this talk of progress leads to, putting people up to them sort of tricks," he said bitterly, and opened a drawer in the desk, and extracted from it the chinese dagger. "That's it. Exhibit No. l," he said. "Nasty looking to keep lying about, I call it."
The Inspector took the knife, which was a thin blade set in a carved ivory handle, and held it for a moment in his hand. "Very nasty," he agreed, and gave it back.
"Exhibit No. 2," proceeded the Superintendent, handing over a sheet of note-paper. "Found under the deceased's hand, like as if he might have written on it just before he died."
"That's interesting," said the Inspector.