you spoke under the name of Dunn at the meeting to-night, and
if I don't mistake, that is the name by which you are known here."

"And you? By what name are you known?"

"It is late to ask, isn't it? But I'm willing to speak it now, and
I might not have been so a little earlier in our conversation. I am
Detective Sweetwater of the New York Department of Police, and my errand
here is a very simple one. Some letters signed by you have been found
among the papers of the lady whose mysterious death at the hotel
Clermont is just now occupying the attention of the New York
authorities. If you have any information to give which will in any way
explain that death, your presence will be welcome at Coroner Heath's
office in New York. If you have not, your presence will still be
welcome. At all events, I was told to bring you. You will be on hand
to accompany me in the morning, I am quite sure, pardoning the
unconventional means I have taken to make sure of my man?"

The humour with which this was said seemed to rob it of anything like
attack, and Mr. Brotherson, as we shall hereafter call him, smiled with
an odd acceptance of the same, as he responded:

"I will go before the police certainly. I haven't much to tell, but what
I have is at their service. It will not help you, but I have no secrets.
What are you doing?"

He bounded towards Sweetwater, who had simply stepped to the window,
lifted the shade and looked across at the opposing tenement.

"I wanted to see if it was still snowing," explained the detective,
with a smile, which seemed to strike the other like a blow. "If it was a
liberty, please pardon it."

Mr. Brotherson drew back. The cold air of self-possession which he now
assumed, presented such a contrast to the unwarranted heat of the
moment before that George wondered greatly over it, and later, when he
recapitulated to me the whole story of this night, it was this incident
of the lifted shade, together with the emotion it had caused, which he
acknowledged as being for him the most inexplicable event of the evening
and the one he was most anxious to hear explained.

As this ends our connection with this affair, I will bid you my personal
farewell. I have often wished that circumstances had made it possible
for me to accompany you through the remaining intricacies of this
remarkable case.

But you will not lack a suitable guide.

BOOK II. AS SEEN BY DETECTIVE SWEETWATER

X. A DIFFERENCE