The police had been busy, the prosecutor’s detectives also, but, so far, the arrest of Darcy and King had been the only ones made.  Singa Phut, whose watch was found clasped in the dead woman’s hand, had been closely questioned, but had established a perfect alibi.

And the testimony as to this came, not from persons of his own nationality, but from business men and others, whose words could not be doubted.  So, in the opinion of the authorities, he was not worth considering further.  He admitted having left his watch at the shop to be repaired, some days before the murder, and had not called at the store since, except on the morning of the crime, and some time after its discovery, to get his timepiece, which, of course, he was not then allowed to take.

Darcy had been formally charged with the crime of murder by the police captain in whose precinct the happening occurred, and, no bail being permissible in murder cases, he must, perforce, remain locked up until his indictment and trial.  He was transferred from the witness room of police headquarters, the day of the funeral, to the less pleasant jail, and put in a cell, as were the other unfortunates of that institution.

Jay Kenneth, Darcy’s lawyer, a young member of the bar, but enthusiastic and a hard worker, had made a formal entry of a plea of not guilty for his client, when the latter had been arraigned before the upper court, and had asked for a speedy trial.

And so, after the first few days of wonder and surmise and of speculation as to whether Darcy or King might have committed the crime, or perhaps some desperate burglar, the Darcy case was crowded off the front page of the newspapers to give way to items of more or less local interest in Colchester.

Up and down the narrow cell paced James Darcy.  His head was bowed, but at times he raised it to look out through the barred door.  All his eyes encountered, though, was the white-washed wall opposite him—­a bare, white and glaring wall that made his eyes burn—­a wall that seemed to shut out hope itself—­as if it were not enough that it had been at the very bottom of Pandora’s box.

Up and down, down and up, now pausing to take his hands from their strained position clasped behind his back that they might grasp the cold bars of his cell door—­slim white hands that had set many a gleaming jewel in burnished gold or cold, glittering platinum, that it might grace the person of some sweet woman.  And now those white fingers grasped cold steel, and a keeper, passing up and down on his half-hourly rounds, wondered, grimly, if they had been stained with the blood of Mrs. Darcy.

But though the wall blocked his vision, Darcy saw through and beyond it.  He saw the glittering showcases in the store, with their arrays of cut glass and silver.  He saw the gleaming jewels in the safe.

He saw, too, the stained and keen paper knife which the drunken King had swaggered in to claim that gray morning.  He saw the red spot on the floor—­the spot which, even now, in spite of many scrubbings, was visible to the men and women who, now that the store was opened for business again, walked in to select some piece of gold or silver, some jewel for their own adornment or that of another.