Initials Only

“Poor fellow,” I commented aloud, as I folded up these words; “he reckoned without you, George. By to-morrow he will be in the hands of the police.”

“Poor fellow?” he repeated. “Better say ‘Poor Miss Challoner!’ They tell me she was one of those perfect women who reconcile even the pessimist to humanity and the age we live in. Why any one should want to kill her is a mystery; but why this man should—There! no one professes to explain it. They simply go by the facts. To-morrow surely must bring strange revelations.”

And with this sentence ringing in my mind, I lay down and endeavoured to sleep. But it was not till very late that rest came. The noise of passing feet, though muffled beyond their wont, roused me in spite of myself. These footsteps might be those of some late arrival, or they might be those of some wary detective intent on business far removed from the usual routine of life in this great hotel.

I recalled the glimpse I had had of the writing-room in the early evening, and imagined it as it was with Miss Challoner’s body removed and the incongruous flitting of strange and busy figures across its fatal floors, measuring distances and peering into corners, while hundreds slept above and about them in undisturbed repose.

Then I thought of him, the suspected and possibly guilty one. In visions over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all the restlessness of a slowly dying down excitement—the surroundings strange and unknown to me, the figure not—seeking for quiet; facing the past; facing the future; knowing, perhaps, for the first time in his life what it was for crime and remorse to murder sleep. I could not think of him as lying still—slumbering like the rest of mankind, in the hope and expectation of a busy morrow. Crime perpetrated looms so large in the soul, and this man had a soul as big as his body; of that I was assured. That its instincts were cruel and inherently evil, did not lessen its capacity for suffering. And he was suffering now; I could not doubt it, remembering the lovely face and fragrant memory of the noble woman he had, under some unknown impulse, sent to an unmerited doom.

At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my recovery from my fainting fit of hours before. Someone had stopped at our door before hurrying by down the hall. Who was that someone? I rose on my elbow, and endeavoured to peer through the dark. Of course, I could see nothing. But when I woke a second time, there was enough light in the room, early as it undoubtedly was, for me to detect a letter lying on the carpet just inside the door.

Instantly I was on my feet. Catching the letter up, I carried it to the window. Our two names were on it—Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson: the writing, Mr. Slater’s.

I glanced over at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too early to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was not my name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,—the exclamation I made on reading it, waking George.

The writing was in Mr. Slater’s hand, and the words were:

IV. SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE

When we took our seats at the breakfast-table, it was with the feeling of being no longer looked upon as connected in any way with this case. Yet our interest in it was, if anything, increased, and when I saw George casting furtive glances at a certain table behind me, I leaned over and asked him the reason, being sure that the people whose faces I saw reflected in the mirror directly before us had something to do with the great matter then engrossing us. His answer conveyed the somewhat exciting information that the four persons seated in my rear were the same four who had been reading at the round table in the mezzanine at the time of Miss Challoner’s death.

Instantly they absorbed all my attention, though I dared not give them a direct look, and continued to observe them only in the glass.

“Is it one family?” I asked.

“Yes, and a very respectable one. Transients, of course, but very well known in Denver. The lady is not the mother of the boys, but their aunt. The boys belong to the gentleman, who is a widower.”

“Their word ought to be good.”

George nodded.

“The boys look wide-awake enough if the father does not. As for the aunt, she is sweetness itself. Do they still insist that Miss Challoner was the only person in the room with them at this time?”

“They did last night. I don’t know how they will meet this statement of the doctor’s.”

“George?”

He leaned nearer.

“Have you ever thought that she might have been a suicide? That she stabbed herself?”

“No, for in that case a weapon would have been found.”

“And are you sure that none was?”

“Positive. Such a fact could not have been kept quiet. If a weapon had been picked up there would be no mystery, and no necessity for further police investigation.”

“And the detectives are still here?”

“I just saw one.”

“George?”

Again his head came nearer.

“Have they searched the lobby? I believe she had a weapon.”

“Laura!”

“I know it sounds foolish, but the alternative is so improbable. A family like that cannot be leagued together in a conspiracy to hide the truth concerning a matter so serious. To be sure, they may all be short-sighted, or so little given to observation that they didn’t see what passed before their eyes. The boys look wide-awake enough, but who can tell? I would sooner believe that—”

I stopped short so suddenly that George looked startled. My attention had been caught by something new I saw in the mirror upon which my attention was fixed. A man was looking in from the corridor behind, at the four persons we were just discussing. He was watching them intently, and I thought I knew his face.

“What kind of a looking person was the man who took you outside last night?” I inquired of George, with my eyes still on this furtive watcher.

“A fellow to make you laugh. A perfect character, Laura; hideously homely but agreeable enough. I took quite a fancy to him. Why?”

“I am looking at him now.”

“Very likely. He’s deep in this affair. Just an everyday detective, but ambitious, I suppose, and quite alive to the importance of being thorough.”

“He is watching those people. No, he isn’t. How quickly he disappeared!”

“Yes, he’s mercurial in all his movements. Laura, we must get out of this. There happens to be something else in the world for me to do than to sit around and follow up murder clews.”

But we began to doubt if others agreed with him, when on passing out we were stopped in the lobby by this same detective, who had something to say to George, and drew him quickly aside.

“What does he want?” I asked, as soon as George had returned to my side.

“He wants me to stand ready to obey any summons the police may send me.”

“Then they still suspect Brotherson?”

“They must.”

My head rose a trifle as I glanced up at George.

“Then we are not altogether out of it?” I emphasised, complacently.

He smiled which hardly seemed apropos. Why does George sometimes smile when I am in my most serious moods.

As we stepped out of the hotel, George gave my arm a quiet pinch which served to direct my attention to an elderly gentleman who, was just alighting from a taxicab at the kerb. He moved heavily and with some appearance of pain, but from the crowd collected on the sidewalk many of whom nudged each other as he passed, he was evidently a person of some importance, and as he disappeared within the hotel entrance, I asked George who this kind-faced, bright-eyed old gentleman could be.

He appeared to know, for he told me at once that he was Detective Gryce; a man who had grown old in solving just such baffling problems as these.

“He gave up work some time ago, I have been told,” my husband went on; “but evidently a great case still has its allurement for him. The trail here must be a very blind one for them to call him in. I wish we had not left so soon. It would have been quite an experience to see him at work.”

“I doubt if you would have been given the opportunity. I noticed that we were slightly de trop towards the last.”

“I wouldn’t have minded that; not on my own account, that is. It might not have been pleasant for you. However, the office is waiting. Come, let me put you on the car.”

That night I bided his coming with an impatience I could not control. He was late, of course, but when he did appear, I almost forgot our usual greeting in my hurry to ask him if he had seen the evening papers.

“No,” he grumbled, as he hung up his overcoat. “Been pushed about all day. No time for anything.”

“Then let me tell you—”

But he would have dinner first.

However, a little later we had a comfortable chat. Mr. Gryce had made a discovery, and the papers were full of it. It was one which gave me a small triumph over George. The suggestion he had laughed at was not so entirely foolish as he had been pleased to consider it. But let me tell the story of that day, without any further reference to myself.

The opinion had become quite general with those best acquainted with the details of this affair, that the mystery was one of those abnormal ones for which no solution would ever be found, when the aged detective showed himself in the building and was taken to the room, where an Inspector of Police awaited him. Their greeting was cordial, and the lines on the latter’s face relaxed a little as he met the still bright eye of the man upon whose instinct and judgment so much reliance had always been placed.

“This is very good of you,” he began, glancing down at the aged detective’s bundled up legs, and gently pushing a chair towards him. “I know that it was a great deal to ask, but we’re at our wits’ end, and so I telephoned. It’s the most inexplicable—There! you have heard that phrase before. But clews—there are absolutely none. That is, we have not been able to find any. Perhaps you can. At least, that is what we hope. I’ve known you more than once to succeed where others have failed.”

The elderly man thus addressed, glanced down at his legs, now propped up on a stool which someone had brought him, and smiled, with the pathos of the old who sees the interests of a lifetime slipping gradually away.

“I am not what I was. I can no longer get down on my hands and knees to pick up threads from the nap of a rug, or spy out a spot of blood in the crimson woof of a carpet.”

“You shall have Sweetwater here to do the active work for you. What we want of you is the directing mind—the infallible instinct. It’s a case in a thousand, Gryce. We’ve never had anything just like it. You’ve never had anything at all like it. It will make you young again.”

The old man’s eyes shot fire and unconsciously one foot slipped to the floor. Then he bethought himself and painfully lifted it back again.

“What are the points? What’s the difficulty?” he asked. “A woman has been shot—”

“No, not shot, stabbed. We thought she had been shot, for that was intelligible and involved no impossibilities. But Drs. Heath and Webster, under the eye of the Challoners’ own physician, have made an examination of the wound—an official one, thorough and quite final so far as they are concerned, and they declare that no bullet is to be found in the body. As the wound extends no further than the heart, this settles one great point, at least.”

“Dr. Heath is a reliable man and one of our ablest coroners.”

“Yes. There can be no question as to the truth of his report. You know the victim? Her name, I mean, and the character she bore?”

“Yes; so much was told me on my way down.”

“A fine girl unspoiled by riches and seeming independence. Happy, too, to all appearance, or we should be more ready to consider the possibility of suicide.”

“Suicide by stabbing calls for a weapon. Yet none has been found, I hear.”

“None.”

“Yet she was killed that way?”

“Undoubtedly, and by a long and very narrow blade, larger than a needle but not so large as the ordinary stiletto.”

“Stabbed while by herself, or what you may call by herself? She had no companion near her?”

“None, if we can believe the four members of the Parrish family who were seated at the other end of the room.”

“And you do believe them?”

“Would a whole family lie—and needlessly? They never knew the woman—father, maiden aunt and two boys, clear-eyed, jolly young chaps whom even the horror of this tragedy, perpetrated as it were under their very nose, cannot make serious for more than a passing moment.”

“It wouldn’t seem so.”

“Yet they swear up and down that nobody crossed the room towards Miss Challoner.”

“So they tell me.”

“She fell just a few feet from the desk where she had been writing. No word, no cry, just a collapse and sudden fall. In olden days they would have said, struck by a bolt from heaven. But it was a bolt which drew blood; not much blood, I hear, but sufficient to end life almost instantly. She never looked up or spoke again. What do you make of it, Gryce?”

“It’s a tough one, and I’m not ready to venture an opinion yet. I should like to see the desk you speak of, and the spot where she fell.”

A young fellow who had been hovering in the background at once stepped forward. He was the plain-faced detective who had spoken to George.

“Will you take my arm, sir?”

Mr. Gryce’s whole face brightened. This Sweetwater, as they called him, was, I have since understood, one of his proteges and more or less of a favourite.

“Have you had a chance at this thing?” he asked. “Been over the ground—studied the affair carefully?”

“Yes, sir; they were good enough to allow it.”

“Very well, then, you’re in a position to pioneer me. You’ve seen it all and won’t be in a hurry.”

“No; I’m at the end of my rope. I haven’t an idea, sir.”

“Well, well, that’s honest at all events.” Then, as he slowly rose with the other’s careful assistance, “There’s no crime without its clew. The thing is to recognise that clew when seen. But I’m in no position, to make promises. Old days don’t return for the asking.”

Nevertheless, he looked ten years younger than when he came in, or so thought those who knew him.

The mezzanine was guarded from all visitors save such as had official sanction. Consequently, the two remained quite uninterrupted while they moved about the place in quiet consultation. Others had preceded them; had examined the plain little desk and found nothing; had paced off the distances; had looked with longing and inquiring eyes at the elevator cage and the open archway leading to the little staircase and the musicians’ gallery. But this was nothing to the old detective. The locale was what he wanted, and he got it. Whether he got anything else it would be impossible to say from his manner as he finally sank into a chair by one of the openings, and looked down on the lobby below. It was full of people coming and going on all sorts of business, and presently he drew back, and, leaning on Sweetwater’s arm, asked him a few questions.

“Who were the first to rush in here after the Parrishes gave the alarm?”

“One or two of the musicians from the end of the hall. They had just finished their programme and were preparing to leave the gallery. Naturally they reached her first.”

“Good! their names?”

“Mark Sowerby and Claus Hennerberg. Honest Germans—men who have played here for years.”

“And who followed them? Who came next on the scene?”

“Some people from the lobby. They heard the disturbance and rushed up pell-mell. But not one of these touched her. Later her father came.”

“Who did touch her? Anybody, before the father came in?”

“Yes; Miss Clarke, the middle-aged lady with the Parrishes. She had run towards Miss Challoner as soon as she heard her fall, and was sitting there with the dead girl’s head in her lap when the musicians showed themselves.”

“I suppose she has been carefully questioned?”

“Very, I should say.”

“And she speaks of no weapon?”

“No. Neither she nor any one else at that moment suspected murder or even a violent death. All thought it a natural one—sudden, but the result of some secret disease.”

“Father and all?”

“Yes.”

“But the blood? Surely there must have been some show of blood?”

“They say not. No one noticed any. Not till the doctor came—her doctor who was happily in his office in this very building. He saw the drops, and uttered the first suggestion of murder.”

“How long after was this? Is there any one who has ventured to make an estimate of the number of minutes which elapsed from the time she fell, to the moment when the doctor first raised the cry of murder?”

“Yes. Mr. Slater, the assistant manager, who was in the lobby at the time, says that ten minutes at least must have elapsed.”

“Ten minutes and no blood! The weapon must still have been there. Some weapon with a short and inconspicuous handle. I think they said there were flowers over and around the place where it struck?”

“Yes, great big scarlet ones. Nobody noticed—nobody looked. A panic like that seems to paralyse people.”

“Ten minutes! I must see every one who approached her during those ten minutes. Every one, Sweetwater, and I must myself talk with Miss Clarke.”

“You will like her. You will believe every word she says.”

“No doubt. All the more reason why I must see her. Sweetwater, someone drew that weapon out. Effects still have their causes, notwithstanding the new cult. The question is who? We must leave no stone unturned to find that out.”

“The stones have all been turned over once.”

“By you?”

“Not altogether by me.”

“Then they will bear being turned over again. I want to be witness of the operation.”

“Where will you see Miss Clarke?”

“Wherever she pleases—only I can’t walk far.”

“I think I know the place. You shall have the use of this elevator. It has not been running since last night or it would be full of curious people all the time, hustling to get a glimpse of this place. But they’ll put a man on for you.”

“Very good; manage it as you will. I’ll wait here till you’re ready. Explain yourself to the lady. Tell her I’m an old and rheumatic invalid who has been used to asking his own questions. I’ll not trouble her much. But there is one point she must make clear to me.”

Sweetwater did not presume to ask what point, but he hoped to be fully enlightened when the time came.

And he was. Mr. Gryce had undertaken to educate him for this work, and never missed the opportunity of giving him a lesson. The three met in a private sitting-room on an upper floor, the detectives entering first and the lady coming in soon after. As her quiet figure appeared in the doorway, Sweetwater stole a glance at Mr. Gryce. He was not looking her way, of course; he never looked directly at anybody; but he formed his impressions for all that, and Sweetwater was anxious to make sure of these impressions. There was no doubting them in this instance. Miss Clarke was not a woman to rouse an unfavourable opinion in any man’s mind. Of slight, almost frail build, she had that peculiar animation which goes with a speaking eye and a widely sympathetic nature. Without any substantial claims to beauty, her expression was so womanly and so sweet that she was invariably called lovely.

Mr. Gryce was engaged at the moment in shifting his cane from the right hand to the left, but his manner was never more encouraging or his smile more benevolent.

“Pardon me,” he apologised, with one of his old-fashioned bows, “I’m sorry to trouble you after all the distress you must have been under this morning. But there is something I wish especially to ask you in regard to the dreadful occurrence in which you played so kind a part. You were the first to reach the prostrate woman, I believe.”

“Yes. The boys jumped up and ran towards her, but they were frightened by her looks and left it for me to put my hands under her and try to lift her up.”

“Did you manage it?”

“I succeeded in getting her head into my lap, nothing more.”

“And sat so?”

“For some little time. That is, it seemed long, though I believe it was not more than a minute before two men came running from the musicians’ gallery. One thinks so fast at such a time—and feels so much.”

“You knew she was dead, then?”

“I felt her to be so.”

“How felt?”

“I was sure—I never questioned it.”

“You have seen women in a faint?”

“Yes, many times.”

“What made the difference? Why should you believe Miss Challoner dead simply because she lay still and apparently lifeless?”

“I cannot tell you. Possibly, death tells its own story. I only know how I felt.”

“Perhaps there was another reason? Perhaps, that, consciously or unconsciously, you laid your palm upon her heart?”

Miss Clarke started, and her sweet face showed a moment’s perplexity.

“Did I?” she queried, musingly. Then with a sudden access of feeling, “I may have done so, indeed, I believe I did. My arms were around her; it would not have been an unnatural action.”

“No; a very natural one, I should say. Cannot you tell me positively whether you did this or not?”

“Yes, I did. I had forgotten it, but I remember now.” And the glance she cast him while not meeting his eye showed that she understood the importance of the admission. “I know,” she said, “what you are going to ask me now. Did I feel anything there but the flowers and the tulle? No, Mr. Gryce, I did not. There was no poniard in the wound.”

Mr. Gryce felt around, found a chair and sank into it.

“You are a truthful woman,” said he. “And,” he added more slowly, “composed enough in character I should judge not to have made any mistake on this very vital point.”

“I think so, Mr. Gryce. I was in a state of excitement, of course; but the woman was a stranger to me, and my feelings were not unduly agitated.”

“Sweetwater, we can let my suggestion go in regard to those ten minutes I spoke of. The time is narrowed down to one, and in that one, Miss Clarke was the only person to touch her.”

“The only one,” echoed the lady, catching perhaps the slight rising sound of query in his voice.

“I will trouble you no further.” So said the old detective, thoughtfully. “Sweetwater, help me out of this.” His eye was dull and his manner betrayed exhaustion. But vigour returned to him before he had well reached the door, and he showed some of his old spirit as he thanked Miss Clarke and turned to take the elevator.

“But one possibility remains,” he confided to Sweetwater, as they stood waiting at the elevator door. “Miss Challoner died from a stab. The next minute she was in this lady’s arms. No weapon protruded from the wound, nor was any found on or near her in the mezzanine. What follows? She struck the blow herself, and the strength of purpose which led her to do this, gave her the additional force to pull the weapon out and fling it from her. It did not fall upon the floor around her; therefore, it flew through one of those openings into the lobby, and there it either will be, or has been found.”

It was this statement, otherwise worded, which gave me my triumph over George.

V. THE RED CLOAK

“What results? Speak up, Sweetwater.”

“None. Every man, woman and boy connected with the hotel has been questioned; many of them routed out of their beds for the purpose, but not one of them picked up anything from the floor of the lobby, or knows of any one who did.”

“There now remain the guests.”

“And after them—(pardon me, Mr. Gryce) the general public which rushed in rather promiscuously last night.”

“I know it; it’s a task, but it must be carried through. Put up bulletins, publish your wants in the papers;—do anything, only gain your end.”

A bulletin was put up.

Some hours later, Sweetwater re-entered the room, and, approaching Mr. Gryce with a smile, blurted out:

“The bulletin is a great go. I think—of course, I cannot be sure—that it’s going to do the business. I’ve watched every one who stopped to read it. Many showed interest and many, emotion; she seems to have had a troop of friends. But embarrassment! only one showed that. I thought you would like to know.”

“Embarrassment? Humph! a man?”

“No, a woman; a lady, sir; one of the transients. I found out in a jiffy all they could tell me about her.”

“A woman! We didn’t expect that. Where is she? Still in the lobby?”

“No, sir. She took the elevator while I was talking with the clerk.”

“There’s nothing in it. You mistook her expression.”

“I don’t think so. I had noticed her when she first came into the lobby. She was talking to her daughter who was with her, and looked natural and happy. But no sooner had she seen and read that bulletin, than the blood shot up into her face and her manner became furtive and hasty. There was no mistaking the difference, sir. Almost before I could point her out, she had seized her daughter by the arm and hurried her towards the elevator. I wanted to follow her, but you may prefer to make your own inquiries. Her room is on the seventh floor, number 712, and her name is Watkins. Mrs. Horace Watkins of Nashville.”

Mr. Gryce nodded thoughtfully, but made no immediate effort to rise.

“Is that all you know about her?” he asked.

“Yes; this is the first time she has stopped at this hotel. She came yesterday. Took a room indefinitely. Seems all right; but she did blush, sir. I ever saw its beat in a young girl.”

“Call the desk. Say that I’m to be told if Mrs. Watkins of Nashville rings up during the next ten minutes. We’ll give her that long to take some action. If she fails to make any move, I’ll make my own approaches.”

Sweetwater did as he was bid, then went back to his place in the lobby.

But he returned almost instantly.

“Mrs. Watkins has just telephoned down that she is going to—to leave, sir.”

“To leave?”

The old man struggled to his feet. “No. 712, do you say? Seven stories,” he sighed. But as he turned with a hobble, he stopped. “There are difficulties in the way of this interview,” he remarked. “A blush is not much to go upon. I’m afraid we shall have to resort to the shadow business and that is your work, not mine.”

But here the door opened and a boy brought in a line which had been left at the desk. It related to the very matter then engaging them, and ran thus:

“Humph! This should simplify our task,” was Mr. Gryce’s comment, as he handed the note over to Sweetwater. “You can easily find out if the lady, now on the point of departure, can be identified with the one described by Mr. McElroy. If she can, I am ready to meet her anywhere.”

“Here goes then!” cried Sweetwater, and quickly left the room.

When he returned, it was not with his most hopeful air.

“The cloak doesn’t help,” he declared. “No one remembers the cloak. But the time of Mrs. Watkins’ arrival was all right. She came in directly on the heels of this catastrophe.”

“She did! Sweetwater, I will see her. Manage it for me at once.”

“The clerk says that it had better be upstairs. She is a very sensitive woman. There might be a scene, if she were intercepted on her way out.”

“Very well.” But the look which the old detective threw at his bandaged legs was not without its pathos.

And so it happened that just as Mrs. Watkins was watching the wheeling out of her trunks, there appeared in the doorway before her, an elderly gentleman, whose expression, always benevolent, save at moments when benevolence would be quite out of keeping with the situation, had for some reason, so marked an effect upon her, that she coloured under his eye, and, indeed, showed such embarrassment, that all doubt of the propriety of his intrusion vanished from the old man’s mind, and with the ease of one only too well accustomed to such scenes, he kindly remarked:

“Am I speaking to Mrs. Watkins of Nashville?”

“You are,” she faltered, with another rapid change of colour. “I—I am just leaving. I hope you will excuse me. I—”

“I wish I could,” he smiled, hobbling in and confronting her quietly in her own room. “But circumstances make it quite imperative that I should have a few words with you on a topic which need not be disagreeable to you, and probably will not be. My name is Gryce. This will probably convey nothing to you, but I am not unknown to the management below, and my years must certainly give you confidence in the propriety of my errand. A beautiful and charming young woman died here last night. May I ask if you knew her?”

“I?” She was trembling violently now, but whether with indignation or some other more subtle emotion, it would be difficult to say. “No, I’m from the South. I never saw the young lady. Why do you ask? I do not recognise your right. I—I—”

Certainly her emotion must be that of simple indignation. Mr. Gryce made one of his low bows, and propping himself against the table he stood before, remarked civilly:—

“I had rather not force my rights. The matter is so very ordinary. I did not suppose you knew Miss Challoner, but one must begin somehow, and as you came in at the very moment when the alarm was raised in the lobby, I thought perhaps you could tell me something which would aid me in my effort to elicit the real facts of the case. You were crossing the lobby at the time—”

“Yes.” She raised her head. “So were a dozen others—”

“Madam,”—the interruption was made in his kindliest tones, but in a way which nevertheless suggested authority. “Something was picked up from the floor at that moment. If the dozen you mention were witnesses to this act we do not know it. But we do know that it did not pass unobserved by you. Am I not correct? Didn’t you see a certain person—I will mention no names—stoop and pick up something from the lobby floor?”

“No.” The word came out with startling violence. “I was conscious of nothing but the confusion.” She was facing him with determination and her eyes were fixed boldly on his face. But her lips quivered, and her cheeks were white, too white now for simple indignation.

“Then I have made a big mistake,” apologised the ever-courteous detective. “Will you pardon me? It would have settled a very serious question if it could be found that the object thus picked up was the weapon which killed Miss Challoner. That is my excuse for the trouble I have given you.”

He was not looking at her; he was looking at her hand which rested on the table before which he himself stood. Did the fingers tighten a little and dig into the palm they concealed? He thought so, and was very slow in turning limpingly about towards the door. Meanwhile, would she speak? No. The silence was so marked, he felt it an excuse for stealing another glance in her direction. She was not looking his way but at a door in the partition wall on her right; and the look was one very akin to anxious fear. The next moment he understood it. The door burst open, and a young girl bounded into the room, with the merry cry:

“All ready, mother. I’m glad we are going to the Clarendon. I hate hotels where people die almost before your eyes.”

What the mother said at this outburst is immaterial. What the detective did is not. Keeping on his way, he reached the door, but not to open it wider; rather to close it softly but with unmistakable decision. The cloak which enveloped the girl was red, and full enough to be called voluminous.

“Who is this?” demanded the girl, her indignant glances flashing from one to the other.

“I don’t know,” faltered the mother in very evident distress. “He says he has a right to ask us questions and he has been asking questions about—about—”

“Not about me,” laughed the girl, with a toss of her head Mr. Gryce would have corrected in one of his grandchildren. “He can have nothing to say about me.” And she began to move about the room in an aimless, half-insolent way.

Mr. Gryce stared hard at the few remaining belongings of the two women, lying in a heap on the table, and half musingly, half deprecatingly, remarked:

“The person who stooped wore a long red cloak. Probably you preceded your daughter, Mrs. Watkins.”

The lady thus brought to the point made a quick gesture towards the girl who suddenly stood still, and, with a rising colour in her cheeks, answered, with some show of resolution on her own part:

“You say your name is Gryce and that you have a right to address me thus pointedly on a subject which you evidently regard as serious. That is not exact enough for me. Who are you, sir? What is your business?”

“I think you have guessed it. I am a detective from Headquarters. What I want of you I have already stated. Perhaps this young lady can tell me what you cannot. I shall be pleased if this is so.”

“Caroline”—Then the mother broke down. “Show the gentleman what you picked up from the lobby floor last night.”

The girl laughed again, loudly and with evident bravado, before she threw the cloak back and showed what she had evidently been holding in her hand from the first, a sharp-pointed, gold-handled paper-cutter.

“It was lying there and I picked it up. I don’t see any harm in that.”

“You probably meant none. You couldn’t have known the part it had just played in this tragic drama,” said the old detective looking carefully at the cutter which he had taken in his hand, but not so carefully that he failed to note that the look of distress was not lifted from the mother’s face either by her daughter’s words or manner.

“You have washed this?” he asked.

“No. Why should I wash it? It was clean enough. I was just going down to give it in at the desk. I wasn’t going to carry it away.” And she turned aside to the window and began to hum, as though done with the whole matter.

The old detective rubbed his chin, glanced again at the paper-cutter, then at the girl in the window, and lastly at the mother, who had lifted her head again and was facing him bravely.

“It is very important,” he observed to the latter, “that your daughter should be correct in her statement as to the condition of this article when she picked it up. Are you sure she did not wash it?”

“I don’t think she did. But I’m sure she will tell you the truth about that. Caroline, this is a police matter. Any mistake about it may involve us in a world of trouble and keep you from getting back home in time for your coming-out party. Did you—did you wash this cutter when you got upstairs, or—or—” she added, with a propitiatory glance at Mr. Gryce—“wipe it off at any time between then and now? Don’t answer hastily. Be sure. No one can blame you for that act. Any girl, as thoughtless as you, might do that.”

“Mother, how can I tell what I did?” flashed out the girl, wheeling round on her heel till she faced them both. “I don’t remember doing a thing to it. I just brought it up. A thing found like that belongs to the finder. You needn’t hold it out towards me like that. I don’t want it now; I’m sick of it. Such a lot of talk about a paltry thing which couldn’t have cost ten dollars.” And she wheeled back.

“It isn’t the value.” Mr. Gryce could be very patient. “It’s the fact that we believe it to have been answerable for Miss Challoner’s death—that is, if there was any blood on it when you picked it up.”

“Blood!” The girl was facing them again, astonishment struggling with disgust on her plain but mobile features. “Blood! is that what you mean. No wonder I hate it. Take it away,” she cried.

“Oh, mother, I’ll never pick up anything again which doesn’t belong to me! Blood!” she repeated in horror, flinging herself into her mother’s arms.

Mr. Gryce thought he understood the situation. Here was a little kleptomaniac whose weakness the mother was struggling to hide. Light was pouring in. He felt his body’s weight less on that miserable foot of his.

“Does that frighten you? Are you so affected by the thought of blood?”

“Don’t ask me. And I put the thing under my pillow! I thought it was so—so pretty.”

“Mrs. Watkins,” Mr. Gryce from that moment ignored the daughter, “did you see it there?”

“Yes; but I didn’t know where it came from. I had not seen my daughter stoop. I didn’t know where she got it till I read that bulletin.”

“Never mind that. The question agitating me is whether any stain was left under that pillow. We want to be sure of the connection between this possible weapon and the death by stabbing which we all deplore—if there is a connection.”

“I didn’t see any stain, but you can look for yourself. The bed has been made up, but there was no change of linen. We expected to remain here; I see no good to be gained by hiding any of the facts now.”

“None whatever, Madam.”

“Come, then. Caroline, sit down and stop crying. Mr. Gryce believes that your only fault was in not taking this object at once to the desk.”

“Yes, that’s all,” acquiesced the detective after a short study of the shaking figure and distorted features of the girl. “You had no idea, I’m sure, where this weapon came from, or for what it had been used. That’s evident.”

Her shudder, as she seated herself, was very convincing. She was too young to simulate so successfully emotions of this character.

“I’m glad of that,” she responded, half fretfully, half gratefully, as Mr. Gryce followed her mother into the adjoining room. “I’ve had a bad enough time of it without being blamed for what I didn’t know and didn’t do.”

Mr. Gryce laid little stress upon these words, but much upon the lack of curiosity she showed in the minute and careful examination he now made of her room. There was no stain on the pillow-cover and none on the bureau-spread where she might very naturally have laid the cutter down on first coming into her room. The blade was so polished that it must have been rubbed off somewhere, either purposely or by accident. Where then, since not here? He asked to see her gloves—the ones she had worn the previous night.

“They are the same she is wearing now,” the anxious mother assured him. “Wait, and I will get them for you.”

“No need. Let her hold out her hands in token of amity. I shall soon see.”

They returned to where the girl still sat, wrapped in her cloak, sobbing still, but not so violently.

“Caroline, you may take off your things,” said the mother, drawing the pins from her own hat. “We shall not go to-day.”

The child shot her mother one disappointed look, then proceeded to follow suit. When her hat was off, she began to take off her gloves. As soon as they were on the table, the mother pushed them over to Mr. Gryce. As he looked at them, the girl lifted off her cloak.

“Will—will he tell?” she whispered behind its ample folds into her mother’s ear.

The answer came quickly, but not in the mother’s tones. Mr. Gryce’s ears had lost none of their ancient acuteness.

“I do not see that I should gain much by doing so. The one discovery which would link this find of yours indissolubly with Miss Challoner’s death, I have failed to make. If I am equally unsuccessful below—if I can establish no closer connection there than here between this cutter and the weapon which killed Miss Challoner, I shall have no cause to mention the matter. It will be too extraneous to the case. Do you remember the exact spot where you stooped, Miss Watkins?”

“No, no. Somewhere near those big chairs; I didn’t have to step out of my way; I really didn’t.”

Mr. Gryce’s answering smile was a study. It seemed to convey a two-fold message, one for the mother and one for the child, and both were comforting. But he went away, disappointed. The clew which promised so much was, to all appearance, a false one.

He could soon tell.