way of refusing, followed the discreet
official who preceded them, and the door of the doctor's room closed
upon him and the inquiries he was about to make.

VI.

NEW FACTS.

Mr. Van Burnam and his sons had gone through the formality of a supper
and were conversing in the haphazard way natural to men filled with a
subject they dare not discuss, when the door opened and Mr. Gryce came
in.

Advancing very calmly, he addressed himself to the father:

"I am sorry," said he, "to be obliged to inform you that this affair is
much more serious than we anticipated. This young woman was dead before
the shelves laden with _bric-a-brac_ fell upon her. It is a case of
murder; obviously so, or I should not presume to forestall the Coroner's
jury in their verdict."

Murder! it is a word to shake the stoutest heart!

The older gentleman reeled as he half rose, and Franklin, his son,
betrayed in his own way an almost equal amount of emotion. But Howard,
shrugging his shoulders as if relieved of an immense weight, looked
about with a cheerful air, and briskly cried:

"Then it is not the body of my wife you have there. No one would murder
Louise. I shall go away and prove the truth of my words by hunting her
up at once."

The detective opened the door, beckoned in the doctor, who whispered
two or three words into Howard's ear.

They failed to awake the emotion he evidently expected. Howard looked
surprised, but answered without any change of voice:

"Yes, Louise had such a scar; and if it is true that this woman is
similarly marked, then it is a mere coincidence. Nothing will convince
me that my wife has been the victim of murder."

"Had you not better take a look at the scar just mentioned?"

"No. I am so sure of what I say that I will not even consider the
possibility of my being mistaken. I have examined the clothing on this
body you have shown me, and not one article of it came from my wife's
wardrobe; nor would my wife go, as you have informed me this woman did,
into a dark house at night with any other man than her husband."

"And so you absolutely refuse to acknowledge her."

"Most certainly."

The detective paused, glanced at the troubled faces of the other two
gentlemen, faces that had not perceptibly altered during these
declarations, and suggestively remarked:

"You have not asked by what means she was killed."

"And I don't care," shouted Howard.

"It was by very peculiar means, also new in my