and then committed suicide. Besides, Lord Arthur insisted that the
evidence in his behalf would be our finding the knife here. He would
not have urged that if he knew we would _not_ find it, if he knew he
himself had carried it away. This is no suicide. A suicide does not
rise and hide the weapon with which he kills himself, and then lie
down again. No, this has been a double murder, and we must look
outside of the house for the murderer.'

"While he was speaking Lyle and I had been searching every corner,
studying the details of each room. I was so afraid that, without
telling me, he would make some deductions prejudicial to Arthur, that
I never left his side. I was determined to see everything that he saw,
and, if possible, to prevent his interpreting it in the wrong way. He
finally finished his examination, and we sat down together in the
drawing-room, and he took out his notebook and read aloud all that Mr.
Sears had told him of the murder and what we had just learned from
Arthur. We compared the two accounts word for word, and weighed
statement with statement, but I could not determine from anything Lyle
said which of the two versions he had decided to believe.

"'We are trying to build a house of blocks,' he exclaimed, 'with half
of the blocks missing. We have been considering two theories,' he went
on: 'one that Lord Arthur is responsible for both murders, and the
other that the dead woman in there is responsible for one of them, and
has committed suicide; but, until the Russian servant is ready to
talk, I shall refuse to believe in the guilt of either.'

"'What can you prove by him!' I asked. 'He was drunk and asleep. He
saw nothing.'