"But you yourself arrested Pauline, sir," Clarke ventured to say.
"Don't be an ass!" was the cool rejoinder. "Could I refuse to arrest her? Suppose you told me now that you had killed the Frenchwoman, wouldn't I be compelled to arrest you?"
"Ha!" laughed Clarke, in solemn mirth, "what about C. E. F.? Wouldn't it be funny if he owned up to it?"
Winter answered not a word. He was busy locking the drawer and rolling down the front of the desk. But Clarke did not really mean what he had said. His mind was dwelling on the inscrutable mystery of the daggers which he had last held in his hands in Soho and now knew to be reposing in a locked desk in Scotland Yard.
"Would you mind telling me, sir, how you managed to get hold of 'em?" he asked.
Winter did not pretend ignorance.
"You will be surprised to hear that I myself took them, disinterred them, from the poor creature's grave in Kensal Green Cemetery," he said.
Clarke's jaw dropped in the most abject amazement. The thing had a supernatural sound. He felt himself bewitched.
"From her grave?" he repeated.
"Yes."