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“Hamilton may have been too befogged with drink to have remembered the order,” suggested the detective.

“I grant you, Brett,” said Douglas thoughtfully, “that the negro may have the nature, the desire, and the opportunity to commit murder—but why select such a weapon?”

“Probably picked up the first thing at hand,” grunted Brett.

“But a desk file is not the ‘first thing at hand’ in a stable,” remarked Douglas calmly. “In fact, it’s the last thing you would expect to find there.”

“I don’t know about that; perhaps it was thrown away in a wastepaper basket, and Hamilton may have picked it out of the ash pile,” suggested Brett.

“What did the file look like?”

“It is of medium size, the slender steel being very sharp, the round solid base being silver. I’ve shown it to several jewelers, and they all say it’s like hundreds of others, rather expensive, but popular with their well-to-do customers, and that they have no means of tracing it back to any particular owner. It was something like that one,” pointing to an upright file on Senator Carew’s desk.