-a traveling-clock, a portfolio, a box of stationery--lay on the
floor. And there was blood on some of the scattered pieces of note-
paper.

The doctor turned back the sheet that covered the corpse. Jean
Daval, dressed in his usual velvet suit, with a pair of nailed boots
on his feet, lay stretched on his back, with one arm folded beneath
him. His collar and tie had been removed and his shirt opened,
revealing a large wound in the chest.

"Death must have been instantaneous," declared the doctor. "One blow
of the knife was enough."

"It was, no doubt, the knife which I saw on the drawing-room
mantelpiece, next to a leather cap?" said the examining magistrate.

"Yes," said the Comte de Gesvres, "the knife was picked up here. It
comes from the same trophy in the drawing room from which my niece,
Mlle. de Saint-Veran, snatched the gun. As for the chauffeur's cap,
that evidently belongs to the murderer."

M. Filleul examined certain further details in the room, put a few
questions to the doctor and then asked M. de Gesvres to tell him
what he had seen and heard. The count worded his story as follows:

"Jean Daval woke me up. I had been sleeping badly, for that matter,
with gleams of consciousness in which I seemed to hear noises, when,
suddenly opening my eyes, I saw Daval standing at the foot of my
bed, with his candle in his hand and fully dressed--as he is now,
for he often worked late into the night. He seemed greatly excited