Miss Lowe had paused just inside the door and seemed resolutely
bound not to look at anything. Kennedy meanwhile had begun a most
minute search of the table and floor of the laboratory near the
spot where the armchair had been sitting.

In my effort to glean what I could from her actions and
expressions I did not notice that Craig had dropped to his knees
and was peering into the shadow under the laboratory table. When
at last he rose and straightened himself up, however, I saw that
he was holding in the palm of his hand a half-smoked, gold-tipped
cigarette, which had evidently fallen on the floor beneath the
table where it had burned itself out, leaving a blackened mark on
the wood.

An instant afterward he picked out from the pile of articles found
in Fortescue's pockets and lying on another table a silver
cigarette case. He snapped it open. Fortescue's cigarettes, of
which there were perhaps a half dozen in the case, were cork-
tipped.

Some one had evidently visited the inventor the night before, had
apparently offered him a cigarette, for there were any number of
the cork-tipped stubs lying about. Who was it? I caught Paula
looking with fascinated gaze at the gold-tipped stub, as Kennedy
carefully folded it up in a piece of paper and deposited it in his
pocket. Did she know something about the case, I wondered?

Without a word, Kennedy seemed to take in the scant furniture of
the laboratory at a glance and a quick step or two brought him
before a steel filing cabinet. One drawer, which had not been