e seared in certain places.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE ROUND OF THE STAIRCASE.

The next morning Mr. Gryce received a small communication from Miss
Butterworth at or near the very time she received one from him. Hers
ran:

You were quite correct. So far as appears, I was the only person to
lean over Mr. Adams's study table after his unfortunate death. I
have had to clip the ends of my boa.

His was equally laconic:

My compliments, madam! Mr. Adams's jaws have been forced apart. A
small piece of paper was found clinched between his teeth. This
paper has been recovered, and will be read at the inquest. Perhaps
a few favored persons may be granted the opportunity of reading it
before then, notably yourself.

Of the two letters the latter naturally occasioned the greater
excitement in the recipient. The complacency of Miss Butterworth was
superb, and being the result of something that could not be communicated
to those about her, occasioned in the household much speculation as to
its cause.

At Police Headquarters more than one man was kept busy listening to the
idle tales of a crowd of would-be informers. The results which had
failed to follow the first day's publication of the crime came rapidly
in during the second. There were innumerable persons of all ages and
conditions who were ready to tell how they had seen this and that one
issue from Mr. Adams's house on the afternoon of his death, but when
asked to give a description of these persons, lost themselves in
generalities as tedious as they were unprofitable. One garrulous old
woman had observed a lady of genteel appearance open the door to an
elderly gentleman in a great-coat; and a fashionably dressed young woman
came in all breathless to relate how a young man with a very pale young
lady on his arm ran against her as she was going by this house at the
very hour Mr. Adams was said to have been murdered. She could not be
sure of knowing the young man again, and could not say if the young lady
was blonde or brunette, only that she was awfully pale and had a
beautiful gray feather in her hat.

Others were ready with similar stories, which confirmed, without adding
to, the facts already known, and night came on without much progress
having been made toward the unravelling of this formidable mystery.

On the next day Mr. Adams's funeral took place. No relatives or intimate
friends having come forward, his landlord