hought of that photograph on the mantelpiece and his look
grew stern and hard again. He was careful to avoid the room the girl had
indicated as occupied by her mother, but of all the others on that floor
he made a hasty search without discovering anything to interest him or
anything of the least importance or at all unusual.

From the wide landing in the centre of the house a narrow stairway,
hidden away behind an angle of the wall so that one did not notice it
at first, led above to three large attics with steeply-sloping roofs and
evidently designed more for storage purposes than for habitation.

The doors of two of these were open and within was merely a collection
of such lumber as soon accumulates in any house.

The door of the third attic was locked, but by aid of the jemmy he still
carried, he forced it open without difficulty.

Within was nothing but a square packing-case, standing in the middle of
the floor. Otherwise the light of the electric torch he flashed around
showed only the bare boarding of the floor and the bare plastered walls.

Near the packing-case a hammer and some nails lay on the floor and the
lid was in position but was not fastened, as though some interruption
had occurred before the task of nailing it down could be completed.

Dunn noted that one nail had been driven home, and he was on the point
of leaving the attic, for he knew he had not much time and hoped that
downstairs he would be able to make some discoveries of importance, when
it occurred to him that it might be wise to see what was in this case,
the nailing down the lid of which had not been completed.

He crossed the room to it, and without drawing the one nail, pushed back
the lid which pivoted on it quite easily.

Within appeared a covering of coarse sacking. He pulled this away with
a careless hand, and beneath the beam of his electric torch showed the
pale and dreadful features of a dead man--of a man, the center of whose
forehead showed the small round hole where a bullet had entered in; of
a man whose still-recognizable features were those of the photograph on
the mantel-piece of the room downstairs, the photograph that was signed:

"Devotedly yours,
Charley Wright."

For a long time Robert Dunn stood, looking down in silence at that dead
face which was hardly more still, more rigid than his own.

He shivered, for he felt very cold. It was as though the coldness of the
death in wh