come
to my house or send me any notes, but simply a blank card, signifying:
"No one knows who wound the clock."

"How delightfully mysterious!" cried Isabella. And with this girlish
exclamation our talk in regard to the clock closed.

The next object that attracted our attention was a paper-covered novel I
discovered on a side-table in the same room.

"Whose is this?" I asked.

"Not mine."

"Not mine."

"Yet it was published this summer," I remarked.

They stared at me astonished, and Isabella caught up the book. It was
one of those summer publications intended mainly for railroad
distribution, and while neither ragged nor soiled, bore evidence of
having been read.

"Let me take it," said I.

Isabella at once passed it into my hands.

"Does your brother smoke?" I asked.

"Which brother?"

"Either of them."

"Franklin sometimes, but Howard, never. It disagrees with him, I
believe."

"There is a faint odor of tobacco about these pages. Can it have been
brought here by Franklin?"

"O no, he never reads novels, not such novels as this, at all events. He
loses a lot of pleasure, we think."

I turned the pages over. The latter ones were so fresh I could almost
put my finger on the spot where the reader had left off. Feeling like a
bloodhound who has just run upon a trail, I returned the book to
Caroline, with the injunction to put it away; adding, as I saw her air
of hesitation: "If your brother Franklin misses it, it will show that he
brought it here, and then I shall have no further interest in it." Which
seemed to satisfy her, for she put it away at once on a high shelf.

Perceiving nothing else in these rooms of a suggestive character, I led
the way into the hall. There I had a new idea.

"Which of you was the first to go through the rooms upstairs?" I
inquired.

"Both of us," answered Isabella. "We came together. Why do you ask, Miss
Butterworth?"

"I was wondering if you found everything in order there?"

"We did not notice anything wrong, did we, Caroline? Do you think that
the--the person who committed that awful crime went _up-stairs_? I
couldn't sleep a wink if I thought so."

"Nor I," Caroline put in. "O, don't say that he went up-stairs, Miss
Butterworth!"

"I do not know it," I rejoined.

"But you asked----"

"And I ask again. Wasn't there some little thing out of its usual
place? I was up in your front chamber after water for a minute, but I
didn't touch anything but the mug.