. Bell had been doing her
own work for several months and taking in fine sewing.

But ambitious newspaper reporters bent themselves to this new task, as
is their custom in all matters of public concern, _i. e._, to outrival
the most noted expert in the line of that particular phase of public
endeavor uppermost at the time. Theories were advanced in the daily
papers that made Sherlock Holmes seem like a novice in detective work
and Lucretia Borgia a mere infant in the skillful administration of
poisons. The regular detectives, both public and private, were aroused
by the mystery that shrouded the case. It remained, however, for the
ubiquitous reporter, to whom society really owes a debt along every line
of worthy public endeavor impossible either to estimate or discharge,
to discover that the handwriting on the box was that of Dr. John Earl,
and that he had been in the habit, for months, of paying almost daily
visits to the Bell home; that he was at Magnolia Beach, but a short ride
from Boston, at the time the package was mailed there; that ostensibly
he had visited the Bell home to attend the little girl who was injured
by the automobile, but that the mother was undoubtedly much interested
in him; that there were many rumors among surgeons that his operation on
the leg of the child had produced tuberculosis; that the district
attorney had received anonymous letters to the effect that Earl had
deliberately attempted to poison both mother and daughter, to be rid of
an unpleasant _liaison_ on the one hand and the evidence of his lack of
skill on the other; that the child had gone to the country after he left
the city and he still supposed her with her mother, hence the saving of
the child's life; that the box of candied fruit was only a blind, and
that some other package must have arrived containing the poison in
another form, possibly in the same wrapping paper with the fruit; that
no possible motive could be discovered for the poisoning by any other
person and no clue could be found leading to a suspicion of any one
else.

With five hundred thousand visitors constantly within the gates of their
city; with a shifting population of nearly a million more; with
permanent residents absorbed in the most strenuous existence known on
the American Continent; with sensation in high life of such frequent
occurrence as to benumb any effort to form a discriminating opinion--the
people of New York (visitors, temporary denizens, those