g on this same hook amid the sheets of Franklin's
correspondence. You can imagine, madam, my satisfaction, and the
gratitude which I felt towards my agent, who by his quickness had
retained to me the honors of a discovery which it would have been
injurious to my pride to have had confined entirely to yourself."

"I can understand," I repeated, and trusted myself to say no more, hot
as my secret felt upon my lips.

"You have read Poe's story of the filigree basket?" he now suggested,
running his finger up and down the filigree work he himself held.

I nodded. I saw what he meant at once.

"Well, the principle involved in that story explains the presence of the
rings in the midst of this stack of letters. Franklin Van Burnam, if he
is the murderer of his sister-in-law, is one of the subtlest villains
this city has ever produced, and knowing that, if once suspected, every
secret drawer and professed hiding-place within his reach would be
searched, he put these dangerous evidences of his guilt in a place so
conspicuous, and yet so little likely to attract attention, that even so
old a hand as myself did not think of looking for them there."

He had finished, and the look he gave me was for myself alone.

"And now, madam," said he, "that I have stated the facts of the case
against Franklin Van Burnam, has not the moment come for you to show
your appreciation of my good nature by a corresponding show of
confidence on your part?"

I answered with a distinct negative. "There is too much that is
unexplained as yet in your case against Franklin," I objected. "You have
shown that he had motive for the murder and that he was connected more
or less intimately with the crime we are considering, but you have by no
means explained all the phenomena accompanying this tragedy. How, for
instance, do you account for Mrs. Van Burnam's whim in changing her
clothing, if her brother-in-law, instead of her husband, was her
companion at the Hotel D----?"

You see I was determined to know the whole story before introducing Miss
Oliver's name into this complication.

He who had seen through the devices of so many women in his day did not
see through mine, perhaps because he took a certain professional
pleasure in making his views on this subject clear to the attentive
Inspector. At all events, this is the way he responded to my
half-curious, half-ironical question:

"A crime planned and perpetrated for the purpose I have just mentioned,