lines on the latter's face relaxed a little as he met the still bright
eye of the man upon whose instinct and judgment so much reliance had
always been placed.

"This is very good of you," he began, glancing down at the aged
detective's bundled up legs, and gently pushing a chair towards him. "I
know that it was a great deal to ask, but we're at our wits' end, and
so I telephoned. It's the most inexplicable--There! you have heard that
phrase before. But clews--there are absolutely none. That is, we have
not been able to find any. Perhaps you can. At least, that is what
we hope. I've known you more than once to succeed where others have
failed."

The elderly man thus addressed, glanced down at his legs, now propped up
on a stool which someone had brought him, and smiled, with the pathos of
the old who sees the interests of a lifetime slipping gradually away.

"I am not what I was. I can no longer get down on my hands and knees to
pick up threads from the nap of a rug, or spy out a spot of blood in the
crimson woof of a carpet."

"You shall have Sweetwater here to do the active work for you. What we
want of you is the directing mind--the infallible instinct. It's a case
in a thousand, Gryce. We've never had anything just like it. You've
never had anything at all like it. It will make you young again."

The old man's eyes shot fire and unconsciously one foot slipped to the
floor. Then he bethought himself and painfully lifted it back again.

"What are the points? What's the difficulty?" he asked. "A woman has
been shot--"

"No, not shot, stabbed. We thought she had been shot, for that was
intelligible and involved no impossibilities. But Drs. Heath and
Webster, under the eye of the Challoners' own physician, have made an
examination of the wound--an official one, thorough and quite final
so far as they are concerned, and they declare that no bullet is to be
found in the body. As the wound extends no further than the heart, this
settles one great point, at least."

"Dr. Heath is a reliable man and one of our ablest coroners."

"Yes. There can be no question as to the truth of his report. You know
the victim? Her name, I mean, and the character she bore?"

"Yes; so much was told me on my way down."

"A fine girl unspoiled by riches and seeming independence. Happy,
too, to all appearance, or we should be more ready to consider the
possibility of suicide."

"Suicide by stabbing calls for a weapon. Yet none has be