!" The word came with some sharpness. "You have detected me at my
old tricks, and I am correspondingly ashamed, and you triumphant. The
gray parasol you have been good enough to send to my house is not mine,
but I was in the room where you picked it up, as you have so cleverly
concluded, and as it is useless for me to evade your perspicacity, I
have come here to confess."

"Ah!" The detective was profoundly interested at once. He drew a chair
up to Miss Butterworth's side and sat down. "You were there!" he
repeated; "and when? I do not presume to ask for what purpose."

"But I shall have to explain my purpose not to find myself at too great
a disadvantage," she replied with grim decision. "Not that I like to
display my own weakness, but that I recognize the exigencies of the
occasion, and fully appreciate your surprise at finding that I, a
stranger to Mr. Adams, and without the excuse which led to my former
interference in police matters, should have so far forgotten myself as
to be in my present position before you. This was no affair of my
immediate neighbor, nor did it seek me. I sought it, sir, and in this
way. I wish I had gone to Jericho first; it might have meant longer
travel and much more expense; but it would have involved me in less
humiliation and possible publicity. Mr. Gryce, I never meant to be mixed
up with another murder case. I have shown my aptitude for detective work
and received, ere now, certain marks of your approval; but my head was
not turned by them--at least I thought not--and I was tolerably sincere
in my determination to keep to my own _metier_ in future and not suffer
myself to be allured by any inducements you might offer into the
exercise of gifts which may have brought me praise in the past, but
certainly have not brought me happiness. But the temptation came, not
through you, or I might have resisted it, but through a combination of
circumstances which found me weak, and, in a measure, unprepared. In
other words, I was surprised into taking an interest in this affair. Oh,
I am ashamed of it, so ashamed that I have made the greatest endeavor to
hide my participation in the matter, and thinking I had succeeded in
doing so, was congratulating myself upon my precautions, when I found
that parasol thrust in my face and realized that you, if no one else,
knew that Amelia Butterworth had been in Mr. Adams's room of death prior
to yourself. Yet I thought I had left no traces behind me. Could yo