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either.”
    “You are adopting a highly improper tone. Stand down.”
    Mr Norman Gale, dentist, gave evidence of a negative character. Then the indignant Mr Clancy took the stand.
    Mr Clancy was news of a minor kind, several degrees inferior to a peeress.
    “Mystery-story writer gives evidence. Well-known author admits purchase of deadly weapon. Sensation in court.”
    But the sensation was, perhaps, a little premature.
    “Yes, sir,” said Mr Clancy shrilly. “I did purchase a blowpipe, and what is more, I have brought it with me today. I protest strongly against the inference that the blowpipe with which the crime was committed was my blowpipe. Here is my blowpipe.”
    And he produced the blowpipe with a triumphant flourish.
    The reporters wrote: “Second blowpipe in court.”
    The coroner dealt severely with Mr Clancy. He was told that he was here to assist justice, not to rebut totally imaginary charges against himself. Then he was questioned about the occurrences on the “Prometheus,” but with very little result. Mr Clancy, as he explained at totally unnecessary length, had been too bemused with the eccentricities of foreign train services and the difficulties of the twenty-four-hour times to have noticed anything at all going on round about him. The whole car might have been shooting snake-venomed darts out of the blowpipes, for all Mr Clancy would have noticed of the matter.
    Miss Jane Grey, hairdresser's assistant, created no flutter among journalistic pens.
    The two Frenchmen followed.
    M. Armand Dupont deposed that he was on his way to London, where he was to deliver a lecture before the Royal Asiatic Society. He and his son had been very interested in a technical discussion and had noticed very little of what went on round them. He had not noticed the deceased until his attention had been attracted by the stir of excitement caused by the discovery of her death.
    “Did you know this Madame Morisot, or Madame Giselle, by sight?”
    “No, monsieur, I had not seen her before.”
    “But she is a well-known figure in Paris, is she not?”
    Old M. Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
    “Not to me. In any case, I am not very much in Paris these days.”
    “You have lately returned from the East, I understand?”
    “That is so, monsieur. From Persia.”
    “You and your son have traveled a good deal in out-of-the-way parts of the world?”
    “Pardon?”
    “You have journeyed in wild places?”
    “That, yes.”
    “Have you ever come across a race of people that used snake venom as an arrow poison?”
    This had to be translated; and when M. Dupont understood the question, he shook his head vigorously.
    “Never - never have I come across anything like that.”
    His son followed him. His evidence was a repetition of his father's. He had noticed nothing. He had thought it possible that the deceased had been stung by a wasp, because he had himself been annoyed by one and had finally killed it.
    The Duponts were the last witnesses.
    The coroner cleared his throat and addressed the jury.
    This, he said, was without doubt the most astonishing and incredible case with which he had ever dealt in this court. A woman had been murdered - they could rule out any question of suicide or accident - in mid-air, in a small inclosed space. There was no question of any outside person having committed the crime. The murderer or murderess must be of necessity one of the witnesses they had heard this morning. There was no getting away from that fact, and a very terrible and awful one it was. One of the persons present had been lying in a desperate and abandoned manner.
    The manner of the crime was one of unparalleled audacity. In the full view often - or twelve, counting the stewards - witnesses, the murderer had placed a blowpipe to his lips and sent the fatal dart on its murderous course through the air, and no one had observed the act. It seemed frankly incredible, but there was the evidence of the blowpipe, of the dart found on the