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danced a massive object that had served as a paperweight for a dead candy king!
    Mad! Chaotic! It left me dull and heavy next morning, but there was still no thought in my mind of staying behind to look after Beryl in case that maniac— No, hang it! The very thought had been killed in my brain. But why? Was it feasible that Beryl had killed it? If so—How?
    She was as calmly inscrutable as ever during breakfast: her hand had healed a good deal too. I left her brusquely, did not even trouble to kiss her as I had on previous mornings. Since the showdown of the previous evening there seemed to radiate from her an alien coldness. It was not so much a material thing as a mental one. Between Beryl, the girl I had loved and married, and this impersonal white-faced, frozen-voiced woman there was a gulf, an unexplainable barrier through which I just couldn’t penetrate—yet.
    In London though, freed from the dreary shackles of the house, I emerged somewhat from the depths and did plenty of hard thinking. She had mentioned Who’s Who . Well, maybe something in that. I had the current edition brought to me and, as I had hoped, Boyd Harkness’ name was given in full, together with his achievements.
    Most of it was praise for his climb from newspapers to commercial eminence as the candy king, but towards the end of the eulogy was a section that impressed me a lot. It read:
    â€œâ€”and amongst the many souvenirs of his private collection of antiques may be mentioned a part of the famous ‘Bloodstone’, of which there are only three others in the world. Valueless as gems, they are nevertheless unique for their antiquity, having been handed down from time immemorial—”
    Bloodstone? Never heard of it! But I had heard of a paperweight that the thing might have become, since it possessed no value outside of its antiquity.
    That struck me as an angle, so after lunch I browsed through the public library, and in Gems, Stones and their Origins I hit on the Bloodstone at last. The writer said:
    â€œA species of mineral allied to the carbon group, but remarkable for its deep blood-red hue. Originally the bloodstone was one massive piece of glasslike mineral, and was found in a remote corner of Arkansas by a trader in 1548. It was then handed down through various families. In 1630 it was split into four parts and became a prize for antique hunters. The four sections in the present day are owned by, Mr. Boyd Harkness, of Bilton-on-Maybury, Essex; Mr. Henry Carson, of Mayfair, London, a famous sportsman; Madame Elva Borini, the celebrated Italian prima-donna, of Naples, Italy; and Dr. Kenneth Cardew, resident envoy to the British Government in Bermuda.
    â€œThe actual origin of the stone is lost in antiquity. Science has puzzled over the fact that ít represents no mineral form known on earth; therefore it seems not illogical to assume that perhaps it came in the dim past from a passing meteor, or as the result of some fusion in the cosmos—”
    Yes, definitely I had got something! Though it did not by any means explain Beryl’s queer behavior. I realized that before me there lay a trial such as a detective is usually called upon to take; and, like a detective, I realized that a slip-up on my part might mean an untimely end. Beryl had warned me of that, and I was more than sure that she was not joking....
    * * * * * * *
    I left the office early and called on Inspector Hilton on my way home.
    â€œHow’d you make out at the ‘Mount’?” I asked him.
    He shrugged. For some reason his manner seemed evasive.
    â€œNot so well. We caught the maniac anyway—or rather the Asylum people did. He was twenty miles away from the ‘Mount’ when they got him, a distance far too great for him to have been connected with the murder of Harkness. At the moment it’s a case of murder by a person or persons unknown—”
    I nodded slowly, then reminded him he had said