ntly the arrival of the police restored order
and limited the inquiry to the rear building, where it undoubtedly
belonged.'

"Mr. Gryce," (here Sweetwater laid by his notes that he might address
the old gentleman more directly), "I was with the boys when they made
their first official investigation. This is why you can rely upon the
facts as here given. I followed the investigation closely and missed
nothing which could in any way throw light on the case. It was a
mysterious one from the first, and lost nothing by further inquiry into
the details.

"The first fact to startle us as we made our way up through the crowd
which blocked halls and staircases was this:--A doctor had been
found and, though he had been forbidden to make more than a cursory
examination of the body till the coroner came, he had not hesitated
to declare after his first look, that the wound had not been made by a
bullet but by some sharp and slender weapon thrust home by a powerful
hand. (You mark that, Mr. Gryce.) As this seemed impossible in face of
the fact that the door had been found buttoned on the inside, we did
not give much credit to his opinion and began our work under the obvious
theory of an accidental discharge of some gun from one of the windows
across the court. But the doctor was nearer right than we supposed. When
the coroner came to look into the matter, he discovered that the wound
was not only too small to have been made by the ordinary bullet, but
that there was no bullet to be found in the woman's body or anywhere
else. Her heart had been reached by a thrust and not by a shot from a
gun. Mr. Gryce, have you not heard a startling repetition of this report
in a case nearer at hand?

"But to go back. This discovery, so important if true, was as yet--that
is, at the time of our entering the room,--limited to the off-hand
declaration of an irresponsible physician, but the possibility
it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it influenced us
unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost immediately into a
consideration of the difficulties attending an entrance into, as well as
an escape from, a room situated as this was.

"Up three flights from the court, with no communication with the
adjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavy
pieces of furniture no one person could handle, the hall door buttoned
on the inside, and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to the left, this
room of death appeared to