bottom, I put on my sternest
air.

"I had not expected any one to enter there so late last night," said I.
"Mr. Van Burnam declared so positively at the inquest that he was the
person we have been endeavoring to identify, that I did not suppose you
would consider it necessary to bring him to the house for me to see."

"And so you were not in the window?"

"I did not say that; I am always where I have promised to be, Mr.
Gryce."

"Well, then?" he inquired sharply.

I was purposely slow in answering him--I had all the longer time to
search his face. But its calmness was impenetrable, and finally I
declared:

"The man you brought with you last night--you were the person who
accompanied him, were you not--was _not_ the man I saw alight there four
nights ago."

He may have expected it; it may have been the very assertion he desired
from me, but his manner showed displeasure, and the quick "How?" he
uttered was sharp and peremptory.

"I do not ask who it was," I went on, with a quiet wave of my hand that
immediately restored him to himself, "for I know you will not tell me.
But what I do hope to know is the name of the man who entered that same
house at just ten minutes after nine. He was one of the funeral guests,
and he arrived in a carriage that was immediately preceded by a coach
from which four persons alighted, two ladies and two gentlemen."

"I do not know the gentleman, ma'am," was the detective's half-surprised
and half-amused retort. "I did not keep track of every guest that
attended the funeral."

"Then you didn't do your work as well as I did mine," was my rather dry
reply. "For I noted every one who went in; and that gentleman, whoever
he was, was more like the person I have been trying to identify than any
one I have seen enter there during my four midnight vigils."

Mr. Gryce smiled, uttered a short "_Indeed!_" and looked more than ever
like a sphinx. I began quietly to hate him, under my calm exterior.

"Was Howard at his wife's funeral?" I asked.

"He was, ma'am."

"And did he come in a carriage?"

"He did, ma'am."

"Alone?"

"He thought he was alone; yes, ma'am."

"Then may it not have been he?"

"I can't say, ma'am."

Mr. Gryce was so obviously out of his element under this
cross-examination that I could not suppress a smile even while I
experienced a very lively indignation at his reticence. He may have seen
me smile and he may not, for his eyes, as I have intimated, were always