“Never mind, just now. You think that half an hour might have elapsed while you were asleep in the piazza chair. Yes. I remember. Here is a small stain of ink on the ends of the thumb and first finger of Orizaba’s right hand, as if he had used them to pick an obstruction from the point of a pen—a hair, for example. Tell me, was Orizaba left-handed? Did he write with his left hand?”
“With either. With one almost as well as with the other.”
“And you use purple ink on your desk, I take it, eh?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Good. Where are the clothes you wore to the banquet? Get them, for we must work rapidly in order to be through before the doctor arrives.”
“Here,” replied Danton, and he brought them from a chair in the bedroom, where he had thrown them down carelessly.
Nick examined them carefully and then returned them to their owner.
“They are all right,” he said. “Hang them, if you can, in their accustomed place, where your valet keeps them. When you have done that, come here.”
Danton returned in a moment and took his place beside Nick.