They stood together on the first gallery. Their faces were on a level with the shoulders of the swinging body. The rope that had hanged him was a slack end of the pulley that had suspended the chandelier. It was made fast to a cleat on the top gallery. Fox leant out and touched the hand.

"He's still warm."

"It happened," said Alleyn, "just before Thompson rang up the Yard."

He stood with his hands clenched to the rail of the gallery, gazing, as if against his will, at the body.

"I should have prevented this," he said. "I should have made the arrest this afternoon."

"I don't see that," said Fox in his ponderous way. "How could you have foretold—"

"This ineffable effrontery," finished Alleyn. "Poor Props."

"That sort's very liable to suicide."

"Suicide?" Alleyn turned to him. "This is not suicide."

"Not—?"

"It's murder. Come up to the gallery here."

They climbed the upper length of the ladder. Alleyn paused when his head and shoulders were above the top gallery and switched on his torch.

"Swept!" he said, with a kind of triumph. "Now, my beauty—I've got you!"

"What's that, sir?" asked Fox from below.

"The gallery's been swept. Do suicides tidy up the ground when they set about it? Thick dust farther along. The typewriter was too tidy and so's this gallows. There'll be no prints, but the mark of the criminal is all over it. We can take the body down now, Fox. I'll stay here a moment. You go back."

They had to draw the body in to the first gallery and then get it down the ladder—no easy job. At last Props lay on the stage in his accustomed surroundings. In answer to Fox's whistle the others had come in from the doors. Thompson was white about the gills and couldn't speak. Alleyn turned to him.

"We've had ill luck to-day, Thompson," he said. "I should have made more sure of him."

"It's my fault, sir."

"No," said Alleyn; "the poor devil was too quick for you."

"I still don't see how it was worked."

"Suppose I said I'd meet you here. Suppose I'd killed a man and you knew it. I get here first. I go up there to the platform, put a noose in that rope, and make the other end fast. Then I climb down again. You come in, very nervous. You've been followed, you say, but you've shaken them off. We start to talk. Then I say I can hear someone coming along that passage. 'By God, they're after us,' I say. 'Come on up this ladder. Quick.' I go up first, past the lower landing. He follows. I get to the top landing and wait with the noose in my hands. As his head comes up, I drop it over. One fierce tug. He loosens his hands and claws his neck. Then a heavy thrust and—That's how it worked."

"My oath!" said Fox.