Perkins laid a hand on the doctor's arm, and the doctor said: "A nice way
of doing things! Arbuthnot would have given his first attention to his
lordship!"

"I'm going to," said Mr. Flexen quietly.

He went to the dead man, looked in his pale face, lifted his hand, let
it fall, and said: "Been dead hours."

Then he examined carefully the position of the knife. He was more than a
minute over it. Then he drew it gingerly from the wound by the ring at
the end of it. It was one of these Swedish knives, the blades of which
are slipped into the handle when they are not being used.

"I think that's the knife that lay, open, in the big ink-stand in the
library. We used it as a paper-knife, and to cut string with," said Mr.
Manley, who was watching him with most careful attention.

"It may have some evidence on the handle," said Mr. Flexen, still holding
it by the ring, and he drove the point of it into the pad of blotting
paper on which Mr. Manley had been wont to write letters at the murdered
man's dictation.

"And how am I to tell whether the wound was self-inflicted, or not?"
cried the doctor in an aggrieved tone.

"If you will get some of the servants, you can remove the body to any
room convenient and make your examination. It's a clean stab into the
heart, and it looks to me as if the person who used that knife had some
knowledge of anatomy. Most people who strike for the heart get the middle