“You, Walter, came nearer the truth when you satisfactorily established the ownership of the watch as the mulatto maid’s. But suppose Maid Robins had accidentally dropped the watch in Spargo’s room at the hotel during his first visit there, and he had found it and taken it to Chicago with him? That’s what probably happened. The mere fact that he wore her watch doesn’t make her his murderess.

“You, Miss Ickthorpe, explained away the watch business with the difference-in-time element, but you overlooked an important item. Your entire solution depends on the presence in Spargo’s room of a powder-puff. Willing to believe that no puff remained on the scene of the crime, because it suited your theory, you made a cursory search and promptly concluded no puff was there. But a puff is there! Had you investigated the cap of the celluloid tube in which Spargo kept his shaving-brush, you would have found a circular pad of powder-puff which toilet-article manufacturers in this effeminate age provide for men’s traveling-kits.”

Miss Ickthorpe said nothing; she seemed actually embarrassed.

“Now for the proper solution,” said Ellery, mercifully looking away. “All three of you, amazingly enough, postulate a woman as the criminal. Yet it was apparent to me, after my examination of the premises, that the murderer must have been a man.” “A man!” they echoed in chorus.

“Exactly. Why did none of you consider the significance of those eight buttons and the two metal clips?” He smiled. “Probably because again they didn’t fit your preconceived theories. But everything must fit in a solution. . . . Enough of scolding. You’ll do better next time.

“Six small pearl buttons, flat, and two slightly larger ones, found in a heap of ashes distinctly not of wood, coal, or paper. There is only one common article which possesses these characteristics—a man’s shirt. A man’s shirt, the six buttons from the front, the two larger ones from the cuffs, the débris from the linen or broadcloth. Some one, then, had burned a man’s shirt in the grate, forgetting that the buttons would not be consumed.

“The metal objects, like a large hook and eye? A shirt suggests haberdashery, the hook and eye suggests only one thing—one of the cheap bow-ties which are purchased ready-tied, so that you do not have to make the bow yourself.”

They were watching his lips like kindergarten children. “You, Crane, observed that Spargo’s bloody left hand had clutched something, most of the blood coming off the palm. But nothing smudged with blood had been found. . . . A man’s shirt and tie had been burned. . . . Inference: In the struggle with the murderer, after he had already been hit on the head and was streaming blood, Spargo had clutched his assailant’s collar and tie, staining them. Borne out too by the signs of struggle in the room.