be as removed from the approach of a murderous
outsider as the spot in the writing-room of the Clermont where Miss
Challoner fell.

"Otherwise, the place presented the greatest contrast possible to that
scene of splendour and comfort. I had not entered the Clermont at that
time, and no, such comparison could have struck my mind. But I have
thought of it since, and you, with your experience, will not find it
difficult to picture the room where this poor woman lived and worked.
Bare walls, with just a newspaper illustration pinned up here and there,
a bed--tragically occupied at this moment--a kitchen stove on which a
boiler, half-filled with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed,--an
old bureau,--a large pine wardrobe against an inner door which we
later found to have been locked for months, and the key lost,--some
chairs--and most pronounced of all, because of its position directly
before the window, a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.

"As it was here the woman fell, this tub naturally received the closest
examination. A board projected from its further side, whither it had
evidently been pushed by the weight of her falling body; and from its
top hung a wet cloth, marking with its lugubrious drip on the boards
beneath the first heavy moments of silence which is the natural
accompaniment of so serious a survey. On the floor to the right lay a
half-used cake of soap just as it had slipped from her hand. The window
was closed, for the temperature was at the freezing-point, but it had
been found up, and it was put up now to show the height at which it had
then stood. As we all took our look at the house wall opposite, a sound
of shouting came up from below. A dozen children were sliding on barrel
staves down a slope of heaped-up snow. They had been engaged in this
sport all the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one had
made a hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape,
running, as I have said, at an almost unattainable distance towards the
left.

"Of her own child, whose cries had roused the neighbours, nothing was to
be seen. The woman in the extreme rear had carried it off to her room;
but when we came to see it later, no doubt was felt by any of us that
this child was too young to talk connectedly, nor did I ever hear that
it ever said anything which could in any way guide investigation.

"And that is as far as we ever got. The coroner's jury brought in a
verdict of