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instructions not to pass the gate at this point or touch the front door at the other. I’ll be here first thing in the morning to meet this youth that opens up. And when I say a couple of men—you’ll know I’ll mean by that: that I don’t want any further repetition of this wicked Harper business.”
    â€œYou think there’s any possibility of that, Inspector?” the sergeant asked quickly.
    â€œI’m not chancing it,” McCarthy said.
    â€œIt’s a mystery to me,” the sergeant murmured reflectively, as they made their way along the alley back to Soho Square. “What became of that body—the one that was hacked up in the front, I mean? I suppose,” he added, a trifle maliciously, “that you’re satisfied in your mind that it was a human that was carved up there, and not some foul brute carving up a dog, or something of that sort.”
    â€œDefinitely,” McCarthy said imperturbably. “I could have told you then that it was a human who’d been killed, and, moreover, that he, or she, had had her jugular vein and probably other main arteries severed.”
    â€œThen why,” the sergeant was beginning, when McCarthy went on.
    â€œAll I pointed out to you, Sergeant, was that there was no actual, visual evidence that it was a murder, and, come to that, there’s no more now. But a severed human jugular, or at any rate a main artery was the one thing which could account, not only for the quantity of blood there was, but the way it was splashed about. In that connection it’s on one of the razor-like edges of that stiletto in which the blood is clotted thickest and not the point, as it would have been had it been a clean stab, such as Harper was killed with.
    â€œThat showed that the victim was slashed viciously, which again suggests hatred, or possibly revenge, as a motive, which certainly wasn’t so in Harper’s case. And for the last thing, the air simply reeked of perfume when I got there, and I’d say an expensive one at that. It hadn’t had time then to evaporate. It isn’t the usual custom of men, even foreigners of the dandified class, to use perfume these days.”
    â€œI knew that scream came from a woman,” the sergeant said with conviction.
    â€œI think I pointed out to you once before to-night, that it might possibly prove to be the woman who was the killer,” the inspector said dryly. “Though I’m bound to say that it’s not over likely. Well,” he said, “we’ve got that something ‘tangible’ that the ‘Sooper’ wanted, if it’s only concerning the murder of poor Harper. But all the same it isn’t all wasted work. Now that we know that the front door was used we’ve got something definite to work on, and a very useful ‘something’ at that.”
    â€œI don’t just see,” the sergeant was commencing, when McCarthy interrupted.
    â€œWe know that whoever escaped out of the square through that door, had a latch-key which admitted them to the place. That narrows things down to a comparatively small circle of people. According to all the rules, Sergeant, that fact ought to put someone in the dock on the capital charge, sooner or later.”
    â€œIt should that ,” the sergeant admitted readily. “I didn’t think of that for the minute, Inspector.”
    â€œBut the unfortunate thing about murder, Sergeant,” McCarthy pursued in that whimsical tone of his, “is that it is never committed according to any rules. The thing that you’re positive is going to happen is generally the last thing that does. If it turns out any different in this case, then it’ll be the exception which proves the rule.”

Chapter VII
    â€œDanny the Dip” Turns Up
    Inspector McCarthy, minus the sergeant’s torch, began to creep his way back in the direction of his lodgings. Any helpful light that might