e, and I asked him rather sharply not to trifle with a
serious subject, but to give me his real opinion, for I wanted it.

"Well, Dallas," he said, "if you must have it at this very undeveloped
stage of the evidence, I think that when you find the ulster you will be
on the track of the murderer," and after a moment's pause he continued:
"The ulster was in the room when we left it and it was not there the
following morning. Some one, therefore, was in the room in the meanwhile
and removed it. Now, it is very unlikely that more than one man was
there, and that man must have been the murderer as well as the thief."
He reflected a moment, and then went on: "The ulster, nevertheless, was
not taken for its value, for to have realized on it the thief must have
contemplated selling it and no man in his right senses, who had been
guilty of murder, would have jeopardized his neck by selling any article
taken from the scene of the crime so conspicuous as that ulster. No," he
resumed, after a moment's thought, "it was taken with some deeper design
and is now either destroyed or safely hidden, or, more likely still,
disposed of in some ingenious way that will only further baffle the
authorities when found."

Thus far Littell's reasoning had been similar to my own, only, as I had
to confess, clearer and more direct. I wished now to lead him a step
further and confront him with the dilemma that had met me when I learned
that White himself had worn the coat out that night after we left him.
So I told him that within less than half an hour after we parted with
him White had left the house wearing the ulster.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"Because," I answered, "the night-officer saw him."

"Well," Littell said, "that is a curious coincidence, I admit, but it
does not interfere at all with our theory. If he did leave the house,"
he continued, reasoning apparently as much to himself as to me, "he
certainly returned, because he was murdered there, and upon returning he
removed the ulster and lay down again and the original conditions were
restored. I do not see that it alters the situation, except that it
drops the curtain a little later."

"Then," I said, "you adhere to the theory that the murderer took the
ulster?"

"Yes, I see no other solution," he replied.

I reflected that if Littell's reasoning were correct, then Winters, or
whomever the man may have been that the night-officer had seen coming
out of the vestibule of