Rodman's genius was the common property of the world. The
American Government could not, even with the verdict of a trial
court, let Rodman's death go by under the smoke-screen of such a
weird, inscrutable mystery.

I was to meet Sir Henry and come here with him. But my train
into New England was delayed, and when I arrived at the station,
I found that Marquis had gone down to have a look at Rodman's
country-house, where the thing had happened.

It was on an isolated forest ridge of the Berkshires, no human
soul within a dozen miles of it - a comfortable stone house in
the English fashion. There was a big drawing-room across one end
of it, with an immense fireplace framed in black marble under a
great white panel to the ceiling. It had a wide black-marble
hearth. There is an excellent photograph of it in the record,
showing the single andiron, that mysterious andiron upon which
the whole tragedy seemed to turn as on a hinge.

Rodman used this drawing-room for a workshop. He kept it
close-shuttered and locked. Not even this big, yellow, servile
creature who took exclusive care of him in the house was allowed
to enter, except under Rodman's eye. What he saw in the final
scenes of the tragedy, he saw looking in through a crack under
the door. The earlier things he noticed when he put logs on the
fire at dark.

Time is hardly a measure for the activities of the mind. These
reflections winged by in a scarcely perceptible interval of it.
They have taken me some time to write out here, but they crowded