perceived it is not a self-inflicted blow he mimics, but a
maddened thrust from an outraged hand. Let us keep to our first
conclusions; only--to be fair to every possibility--the condition of Mr.
Adams's affairs and the absence of all family papers and such documents
as may usually be found in a wealthy man's desk prove that he had made
some preparation for possible death. It may have come sooner than he
expected and in another way, but it was a thought he had indulged in,
and--madam, I have a confession to make also. I have not been quite fair
to my most valued colleague. The study--that most remarkable of
rooms--contains a secret which has not been imparted to you; a very
peculiar one, madam, which was revealed to me in a rather startling
manner. This room can be, or rather could be, cut off entirely from the
rest of the house; made a death-trap of, or rather a tomb, in which this
incomprehensible man may have intended to die. Look at this plate of
steel. It is worked by a mechanism which forces it across this open
doorway. I was behind that plate of steel the other night, and these
holes had to be made to let me out."

"Ha! You detectives have your experiences! I should not have enjoyed
spending that especial evening with you. But what an old-world tragedy
we are unearthing here! I declare"--and the good lady actually rubbed
her eyes--"I feel as if transported back to mediaeval days. Who says we
are living in New York within sound of the cable car and the singing of
the telegraph wire?"

"Some men are perfectly capable of bringing the mediaeval into Wall
Street. I think Mr. Adams was one of those men. Romanticism tinged all
his acts, even the death he died. Nor did it cease with his death. It
followed him to the tomb. Witness the cross we found lying on his
bosom."

"That was the act of another's hand, the result of another's
superstition. That shows the presence of a priest or a woman at the
moment he died."

"Yet," proceeded Mr. Gryce, with a somewhat wondering air, "he must have
had a grain of hard sense in his make-up. All his contrivances worked.
He was a mechanical genius, as well as a lover of mystery."

"An odd combination. Strange that we do not feel his spirit infecting
the very air of this study. I could almost wish it did. We might then be
led to grasp the key to this mystery."

"That," remarked Mr. Gryce, "can be done in only one way. You have
already pointed it out. We must trace the young couple