was the real cause of death or not. Of course, it's a bad wound,
it's true. But there seems to be something else here, too. Look at
the pupils of his eyes, how contracted they are. The lungs seem
congested, too. He has all the marks of having been asphyxiated.
Yet there are no indications on his throat of violence such as
would be necessary if that were the case. There could have been no
such thing as illuminating gas, nor have we found any trace of any
receptacles which might have held poison. I can't seem to make it
out."

Kennedy bent over the body and looked at it attentively for
several minutes, while we stood back of him, scarcely uttering a
word in the presence of this terrible thing.

Deftly Kennedy managed to extract a few drops of blood from about
the wound and transfer them to a very small test-tube which he
carried in a little emergency pocket-case in order to preserve
material for future study.

"You say the dagger was triangular, Norton?" he asked finally,
without looking up from his minute examination.

"Yes, with another blade that shot out automatically when you knew
the secret of pressing the hilt in a certain way. The outside
triangular blade separated into three to allow an inner blade to
shoot out."

Kennedy had risen and, as Norton described the Inca dagger, looked
from one to the other of us keenly.