Thompson nodded.
"I told the doctor, a few letters and trinkets. He said I must get them as soon as the detectives had left and the house was clear. But I can say, sir, there was never anything really out of the way. She wasn't quite happy with the doctor. It would be a kindness to the dead—"
Garth smiled, turning to Nora.
"You wouldn't give me away, would you? All right, Thompson. Do what you came to do."
Thompson shot him a grateful glance and returned to his obliterating task at the desk. Garth snapped on the light.
"But, Jim," Nora asked, "how did you know that man had been a witness? Was it a guess?"
Garth shook his head.
"Simple enough," he said.
He took a short, slender, silvery thread from his pocket. With a shame-faced look he handed it to Nora.
"You'd know more about such things than I. It's a wire that made a broken, worn-out rose look a whole lot better than it was. I found it and the rose in the next room. I recognized it, because, Nora, when I came to dinner the other night I stopped at a sidewalk stand and bought a rose for my button-hole. Silly, wasn't it? But it was a good thing, because I got stung with one of those. That's why I knew what the broken stem and the wire meant. I learned that Randall didn't wear flowers, and I made sure this afternoon what kind of a rose Treving would have worn. Therefore, somebody else had been in that room, wearing a cheap rose which he had almost certainly got at that cheap wedding. When I heard Randall had sent for this man I decided to hold over my subpoenas for the servants until to-morrow, and run out here myself as soon as the detectives were called in—maybe get my man when he wouldn't lie."