It looked like an end of black tape; but whether it was this or something quite different, it held the gaze of the man who was speaking, so completely that he forgot to go on.
The hush which followed paled the cheeks of more than one man there.
To release the tension, the District Attorney resumed his argument, observing quietly, and as if no interruption had occurred: "As to the arrow and its means of secret transfer from one side of the building to the other in the face of a large crowd, let me direct your attention to this little strip of folded silk.

You have seen it before.
Surely, I am quite justified in asking whether indeed you have not handled it both before and after the lamentable occurrence we are discussing ?" "I see it for the first time," came from lips so stiff that the words were with difficulty articulated.

"What is its purpose ?" he asked after a short pause.
"I hardly think it necessary to tell you," came in chilling response from the now thoroughly disenchanted official.

"It looks like a loop, and notwithstanding your assertion that you see it now for the first time, we have ample evidence that it was once attached to the coat you wore on that fatal day and later carefully severed from it and dropped on the museum floor." The District Attorney waited, they all waited with eyes on the subject of this attack, for some token of shame or indignation at this scarcely veiled insinuation.

But beyond a certain stillness of expression, still further masking a countenance naturally cold and irresponsive, no hint was given that any effect had been produced upon him by these words.
The coal before it falls apart into ash holds itself intact though its heart of flame has departed; so he--or such was Mr.Gryce's thought as he waited for the District Attorney's next move.
It was of a sort which recalls that soul-harrowing legend of the man hung up in an iron cage above a yawning precipice, from under whose madly shifting feet one plank after another is withdrawn from the cage's bottom, till no spot is left for him to stand on; and he falls.
"I hear that you are an expert with the bow and arrow, Mr.Roberts, or rather were at an earlier stage of your career.